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Niksen
ŷ Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Fiction (2016), Nominee for Readers' Favorite Debut ŷ Author (2016)”Et psykologisk mor-søn drama om fortidens spøgelser og politik, men også en tragikomedie om vrede og amerikansk dobbeltmoral. Nathan Hill er mesterlig.� � John Irving
Samuels mor forlod ham, da han var en stor dreng, og han har ikke set hende i tyve år. Pludselig er hun forsidestof i alle medier efter at have smidt sten efter en republikansk præsidentkandidat. Hun bliver beskrevet som en radikal hippie med en broget fortid i Chicagos protestbevægelse i 1968, men så vidt Samuel ved, var hans mor en helt almindelig pige fra Midtvesten, som giftede sig med sin ungdomskæreste. Hvilken version er rigtig?
Da Samuel skylder sin forlægger en bog, går han med til at skrive om sin mors liv. I takt med at Samuel arbejder sig igennem sin families historie, finder han hemmeligheder, som tvinger ham til at se sin mor � og sig selv � i et andet lys.
NIKSEN er en stærk, rørende og satirisk fortælling om familie og relationer i en tid med store forandringer.
Samuels mor forlod ham, da han var en stor dreng, og han har ikke set hende i tyve år. Pludselig er hun forsidestof i alle medier efter at have smidt sten efter en republikansk præsidentkandidat. Hun bliver beskrevet som en radikal hippie med en broget fortid i Chicagos protestbevægelse i 1968, men så vidt Samuel ved, var hans mor en helt almindelig pige fra Midtvesten, som giftede sig med sin ungdomskæreste. Hvilken version er rigtig?
Da Samuel skylder sin forlægger en bog, går han med til at skrive om sin mors liv. I takt med at Samuel arbejder sig igennem sin families historie, finder han hemmeligheder, som tvinger ham til at se sin mor � og sig selv � i et andet lys.
NIKSEN er en stærk, rørende og satirisk fortælling om familie og relationer i en tid med store forandringer.
750 pages, Hardcover
First published August 30, 2016
5,272 people are currently reading
110k people want to read
About the author
Nathan Hill
12books3,157followersNathan Hill's short fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including The Iowa Review, AGNI, The Gettysburg Review, and Fiction, where he was awarded the annual Fiction Prize. A native Iowan, he lives with his wife in Naples, Florida.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 9,945 reviews
November 21, 2024
Picking out a quote to open a review of The Nix is no small undertaking. There are so many from which to choose. So I am just tossing this small selection out there up front. Feel free to choose your own opening quote.
Sam is not exactly having a great life, numbing the pain of his failure with endless hours playing an interactive role-playing game, Elfscape, in which his name is, appropriately, Dodger. He had a story published some years back, even got a book deal. The only problem is that he has been unable to produce a book. His publisher wants that hefty advance back, and Sam, needless to say, is a touch light at the moment. Maybe the root of his problem has to do with his mother leaving him and his father when he was nine-years-old, never to be seen again.
Nathan Hill - from his site
In Chicago, a particularly toxic Wyoming politician by the name of Sheldon Packer, with his entourage and media wake, is heading through Grant Park when a sixty-year-old woman picks up a handful gravel and heaves the lot in his general direction, with the vocal accompaniment, “You Pig.� The press being what the press is, she is instantly labeled The Packer Attacker. Soon identified as having attended a Chicago protest during the 1968 Democratic Convention, she is quickly labeled a terrorist. It is learned, also, that she had been charged with prostitution back then. The judge assigned to her case, it turns out, has a personal vendetta against her. She is Sam’s mother.
Check, please. Faye Andreson-Anderson, now a teaching assistant, had given her all to getting the life she wanted. But the thing she most wanted turned out to wield the sharpest blades, and so she fled. No, not Sam and her husband, before that. Bailing on Sam and Henry came later. But of course she had learned her lessons somewhere. Seems that bailing was a bit of a family tradition, and just why was it that her father had always seemed so sad?
The Nix covers this estranged mother and son, looking at Faye’s 1968 journey, Sam as a kid in 1988, a teacher, obsessive gamer, and failed writer in 2011, with a quick side trip to 2004. Hill ties these together with notable protests, the 1968 Democratic Convention events, or police riot, the 2004 demonstration in New York City against the Republican Convention, and the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park. Hill clearly did a lot of homework for his descriptions of the Chicago events. His tale of that time sings. Much less so for the latter demos, although he does toss in some nice details of both. It is the Chicago one that matters most.
The Nix of the title is a tricky beast, in two varieties, a legend Faye’s Norwegian father brought across the ocean with him, along with a penchant for silence, a sour take on life, and a large secret. It is a house spirit, a basement-dwelling, slimmed-down Santa-looking sort that is easily offended. Once you insult this ghost, once you piss off a nisse, it will torment you wherever you go, for the rest of your days. When Faye passes on the nisse legend to Sam, it has become a beautiful white horse, a most desirable thing, that, once achieved will cause your destruction.
This is a novel of both ideas and feeling. Sam and Faye are damaged people, carriers of a family curse, seemingly doomed to go through lives rich with both hope and dreams and the crushing disappointment that inevitably follows. For those of us who have not found non-stop success in our lives, it is not hard to relate to folks who have been hurt so deeply by forces beyond their control, and who have made things even worse with their own mis-steps. Sam likes to think of life as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book in which it would be really great if you could mark the page where each decision was made, and go back to make a different choice, if the one you made the first time did not work out as hoped. How many of us would pass up a chance at that? Sam, as a teacher, being beset by a clearly dark force in the form of a horror of a student, works well to get us on his side as well.
Faye endures a sequence, starting with a less than supportive set of parents, who drive her to a place she really does not want to go. While one may take issue with her decisions, and how she goes about them, one can certainly appreciate the pain and stresses that drive her choices. Most of the characters, primary and secondary, guard core secrets that drive their lives. It does make one stop and think about what secrets might drive ours.
The ideas piece covers a lot of turf. This is very much a social satire. The media and its manipulation comes in for a particularly searing look, most pointedly where it intersects with politics. Of course it’s getting harder and harder to write satire these days, as events and the surreality of the real keep leap-frogging whatever writers dream up. A 1968 cop who doffs his badge and name tag to whale on protesters without being identifiable seems a lesser version of the current spate of blue on black (and blue on protester) violence. A sociopathic student with political aspirations could hardly seem more ridiculous than the results of the 2016 election. And the ideology-free media whoredom of one of the characters has already been far outshone by Steve Bannon, although it is clear that Bannon is far from ideology-free. A 1960s home ec teacher does for feminism what Donald Trump does for honesty.
Hill knows a thing or two about his subject matter. Sam’s gaming certainly sings with the siren song of familiarity. Hill was a young writer taking his shot in New York, and enduring the all-too-familiar writerly experience of finding no takers for his work, well, not enough anyway. Twenty to forty hours a week with World of Warcraft eased or at least distracted him from that pain. He has done some time as a college instructor so can speak to some of the horrors that entails, even if the horror he describes, in what we take to be satire, feels a little too true, certainly behavior that would not be beyond many a contemporary politician. Even his choose-you-own entry has a personal root.
There is also an aroma of the cynicism and false equivalence that has made a mockery of much of modern journalism, and that detracted from the story. I took the following to indicate more than the cynicism of the character but to indicate the author’s take as well
So, while this element does make my blood boil a bit, the elevated mercury level does not take away from the fact that The Nix is a pretty amazing book. It covers a lot of territory, without losing its human element. It offers intriguing and well-woven themes, relatable characters, thoughtful (if sometimes questionable) social analysis, a fair bit of grim humor and that satisfying feeling, once one has read its 620 pages (trimmed down from over a thousand), that you have read a major work. If you haven’t read this one yet, you should. And I am outta here. Check, please.
Review first Posted � December 9, 2016
Publication Date � August 30, 2016
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s , and pages
Essay by Hill for Powell’s on
of Hill in the NY Times � August 27, 2016
-----Print - - this one is a cornucopia of insight into the novel. Must read if you want to dig into this book. For example:
-----Audio -
----------
January 27, 2017 - I know, I know, say it ain't so, but here we are offering a link to a George Will column, one that speaks to the stress Samuel encounters in attempting to apply academic standards to his toxic student. We take our common ground where we find it. - .
”…when all you have is the memory of a thing,� she said, “all you can think about is how the thing is gone.�Check, please. Samuel Andreson-Anderson has been bailing on his own life for a long time. A professor at a college in suburban Chicago, he is beset by a clinically narcissistic pathological plagiarist of a student who puts all her considerable talent and energy into bailing on doing her assignments, while seeing that others are left holding the bag for her misdeeds. It would be funnier if we had not elected her spiritual twin to the White House, or maybe that is why it is so darkly funny.
The things you love the most will one day hurt you the worst.
…given enough time, any weight can become too much to bear
..despite what the newspapers said, it was not the time of free love. It was the time of free-love writing, when free love was widely condemned, rarely practiced, and terrifically marketed.
Something does not have to happen for it to feel real.
What you call conflict of interest, I call synergy.
…if a new beginning is really new, it will feel like a crisis. Any real change should make you feel, at first, afraid. If you’re not afraid of it, then it’s not real change.
Sam is not exactly having a great life, numbing the pain of his failure with endless hours playing an interactive role-playing game, Elfscape, in which his name is, appropriately, Dodger. He had a story published some years back, even got a book deal. The only problem is that he has been unable to produce a book. His publisher wants that hefty advance back, and Sam, needless to say, is a touch light at the moment. Maybe the root of his problem has to do with his mother leaving him and his father when he was nine-years-old, never to be seen again.
Nathan Hill - from his site
In Chicago, a particularly toxic Wyoming politician by the name of Sheldon Packer, with his entourage and media wake, is heading through Grant Park when a sixty-year-old woman picks up a handful gravel and heaves the lot in his general direction, with the vocal accompaniment, “You Pig.� The press being what the press is, she is instantly labeled The Packer Attacker. Soon identified as having attended a Chicago protest during the 1968 Democratic Convention, she is quickly labeled a terrorist. It is learned, also, that she had been charged with prostitution back then. The judge assigned to her case, it turns out, has a personal vendetta against her. She is Sam’s mother.
Check, please. Faye Andreson-Anderson, now a teaching assistant, had given her all to getting the life she wanted. But the thing she most wanted turned out to wield the sharpest blades, and so she fled. No, not Sam and her husband, before that. Bailing on Sam and Henry came later. But of course she had learned her lessons somewhere. Seems that bailing was a bit of a family tradition, and just why was it that her father had always seemed so sad?
She remained in people’s good graces by being exactly who they wanted her to be. She aced every test. She won every academic award the school offered. When the teacher assigned a chapter from a book, Faye went ahead and read the whole book. Then read every book written by that author that was available at the town library. There was not a subject at which she did not excel…Everyone said she had a good head on her shoulders…She was always smiling and nodding, always agreeable. It was difficult to dislike her, for there was nothing to dislike—she was accommodating, docile, self-effacing, compliant, easy to get along with. Her outward personality had no hard edges to bump into. Everyone agreed that she was really nice. To her teachers. Faye was the achiever, the quiet genius at the back of the room. They gushed about her at conferences, noting especially her discipline and drive.From the opening epigraph, which recounts the familiar tale of several blind men being asked to evaluate an object, but only being allowed to touch one part of it, and coming up with diverse notions that somehow do not combine to form the elephant they touched, we can expect that the characters in The Nix will have different perspectives on the events about to unfold. And so Nathan Hill shows us the beast, part by part, until the whole gray, wrinkly hide and pachydermy shape becomes a bit clearer.
It was, Faye knew, all an elaborate game.
The Nix covers this estranged mother and son, looking at Faye’s 1968 journey, Sam as a kid in 1988, a teacher, obsessive gamer, and failed writer in 2011, with a quick side trip to 2004. Hill ties these together with notable protests, the 1968 Democratic Convention events, or police riot, the 2004 demonstration in New York City against the Republican Convention, and the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park. Hill clearly did a lot of homework for his descriptions of the Chicago events. His tale of that time sings. Much less so for the latter demos, although he does toss in some nice details of both. It is the Chicago one that matters most.
The Nix of the title is a tricky beast, in two varieties, a legend Faye’s Norwegian father brought across the ocean with him, along with a penchant for silence, a sour take on life, and a large secret. It is a house spirit, a basement-dwelling, slimmed-down Santa-looking sort that is easily offended. Once you insult this ghost, once you piss off a nisse, it will torment you wherever you go, for the rest of your days. When Faye passes on the nisse legend to Sam, it has become a beautiful white horse, a most desirable thing, that, once achieved will cause your destruction.
This is a novel of both ideas and feeling. Sam and Faye are damaged people, carriers of a family curse, seemingly doomed to go through lives rich with both hope and dreams and the crushing disappointment that inevitably follows. For those of us who have not found non-stop success in our lives, it is not hard to relate to folks who have been hurt so deeply by forces beyond their control, and who have made things even worse with their own mis-steps. Sam likes to think of life as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book in which it would be really great if you could mark the page where each decision was made, and go back to make a different choice, if the one you made the first time did not work out as hoped. How many of us would pass up a chance at that? Sam, as a teacher, being beset by a clearly dark force in the form of a horror of a student, works well to get us on his side as well.
Faye endures a sequence, starting with a less than supportive set of parents, who drive her to a place she really does not want to go. While one may take issue with her decisions, and how she goes about them, one can certainly appreciate the pain and stresses that drive her choices. Most of the characters, primary and secondary, guard core secrets that drive their lives. It does make one stop and think about what secrets might drive ours.
The ideas piece covers a lot of turf. This is very much a social satire. The media and its manipulation comes in for a particularly searing look, most pointedly where it intersects with politics. Of course it’s getting harder and harder to write satire these days, as events and the surreality of the real keep leap-frogging whatever writers dream up. A 1968 cop who doffs his badge and name tag to whale on protesters without being identifiable seems a lesser version of the current spate of blue on black (and blue on protester) violence. A sociopathic student with political aspirations could hardly seem more ridiculous than the results of the 2016 election. And the ideology-free media whoredom of one of the characters has already been far outshone by Steve Bannon, although it is clear that Bannon is far from ideology-free. A 1960s home ec teacher does for feminism what Donald Trump does for honesty.
Hill knows a thing or two about his subject matter. Sam’s gaming certainly sings with the siren song of familiarity. Hill was a young writer taking his shot in New York, and enduring the all-too-familiar writerly experience of finding no takers for his work, well, not enough anyway. Twenty to forty hours a week with World of Warcraft eased or at least distracted him from that pain. He has done some time as a college instructor so can speak to some of the horrors that entails, even if the horror he describes, in what we take to be satire, feels a little too true, certainly behavior that would not be beyond many a contemporary politician. Even his choose-you-own entry has a personal root.
Mr. Hill knew from the time he was in elementary school that he wanted to be a writer. In second grade, he wrote a choose-your-own-adventure story about a brave knight trying to rescue a princess from a haunted castle. He titled it “The Castle of No Return� and illustrated it himself. (“The Castle of No Return� still sits in a box somewhere in his parents� attic, but Mr. Hill sneaked the story into “The Nix,� during a pivotal flashback to Samuel’s childhood.) - from theAnd Hill has worked as a journalist as well, so has good touch-and-feel for that end of things.
There is also an aroma of the cynicism and false equivalence that has made a mockery of much of modern journalism, and that detracted from the story. I took the following to indicate more than the cynicism of the character but to indicate the author’s take as well
“What’s true? What’s false? In case you haven’t noticed, the world has pretty much given up on the old Enlightenment idea of piecing together the truth based on observed data. Reality is too complicated and scary for that. Instead, it’s way easier to ignore all data that doesn’t fit your preconceptions and believe all data that does. I believe what I believe, and you believe what you believe, and we’ll all agree to disagree. It’s liberal tolerance meets dark ages denialism. It’s very hip right now. �Actually, there is a definite tilt in how the sides of the political spectrum view reality. One side actually cares about facts, about the truth. The other side does not. And I am not talking about the Bernie bros who seem to equate Hillary with the Donald. Within the mainstream of the Democratic Party and what used to be the saner elements of the Republican Party, facts matter. With what has become the dominant strain of the Republican Party, they do not.
“This sounds awful.�
“We are more politically fanatical than ever before, more religiously zealous, more rigid in our thinking, less capable of empathy. The way we see the world is totalizing and unbreakable. We are completely avoiding the problems that diversity and worldwide communication imply. Thus, nobody cares about antique ideas like true or false.
So, while this element does make my blood boil a bit, the elevated mercury level does not take away from the fact that The Nix is a pretty amazing book. It covers a lot of territory, without losing its human element. It offers intriguing and well-woven themes, relatable characters, thoughtful (if sometimes questionable) social analysis, a fair bit of grim humor and that satisfying feeling, once one has read its 620 pages (trimmed down from over a thousand), that you have read a major work. If you haven’t read this one yet, you should. And I am outta here. Check, please.
Review first Posted � December 9, 2016
Publication Date � August 30, 2016
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s , and pages
Essay by Hill for Powell’s on
of Hill in the NY Times � August 27, 2016
He pilfered so much from his own life that he had to reassure his mother that Faye was not based on her. “I had to warn my mom, ‘Some of this is going to sound very familiar to you,’� he said.Interviews
-----Print - - this one is a cornucopia of insight into the novel. Must read if you want to dig into this book. For example:
I was also writing this during our great recession, which was in part caused by the things we thought were so safe they were eventually risk-free. Things like mortgage-backed securities, AAA-rated sovereign debt. The retirement that you’ve been working all your life for suddenly gone in a flash. And so one of the things I was thinking about was that kind of economic anxiety that was happening in the country while I was composing the novel and it seemed to be that, yeah, the reason why the financial crisis was a crisis was because we believed that things were so safe as to be risk-free. We thought they were too good to be true, so the housing market could never fail, you know, and so I guess that helped me connect the personal stories with the political, it helped me see what’s happened between this mother and this son is happening writ large in the rest of the country.-----Video - - 11:20
-----Audio -
----------
January 27, 2017 - I know, I know, say it ain't so, but here we are offering a link to a George Will column, one that speaks to the stress Samuel encounters in attempting to apply academic standards to his toxic student. We take our common ground where we find it. - .
April 2, 2017
Update news.. exciting: Meryl Streep is going to star and produce "The Nix" mini series with JJ Abrams!!!!!
All I knew about "The Nix" before I started reading my 625 page physical book, was the 'few' things I heard, ( "GOOD", "GREAT", "TERRIFIC WRITING", "SIMILAR to JONATHAN FRANZEN"......all of which I agree by the way), but I purposely have not read reviews-yet. I'm tempted to now....but I'll wait -- enjoy what other readers have to say soon.
Not one person told me how incredibly ENJOYABLE the STORYTELLING was.
IMMEDIATELY I was pulled into the wonderful world of fiction. FANTASTIC NOVEL...one of my years favorites- for SURE!!!
In the prologue- summer 1988 - Samuel ( narrator), describes how his mother, slowly, bit, by bit "whittled down her life until the only thing left to remove was herself".
"On the day she disappeared, she left the house with a single suitcase".
Part 1 - late summer 2011 - "GOVERNOR, SHELDON PACKER, of Chicago, is ATTACKED".
The woman accused of the attack is Faye Andersen-Anderson. She is a teaching assistant at a local elementary school....considered a sixties radical hippie prostitute teacher.
We will be introduced to Guy Periwinkle- ( publisher) -- He and Sam will have there own running theme throughout this novel about Sam's novel which isn't finished for which he had received advance payment.
Samuel Anderson, is in his 30's, a College Literature Professor at a small University northwest of Chicago. He is also a struggling writer, and a game player in the virtual world. His game choice is "World of Elfscape". Samual plays 'Elfscape' from his University office, because he gets faster Internet connection than at home.
There's a hilarious scene about a student, Laura Pottsdam,(who wears sweatshorts with various words written across the butt), who handed in a plagiarized paper.
Laura is arguing with Samuel saying she did not cheat. Samuel is saying that according to the software, her essay came from FreeTermPapers.com.
Laura says she never heard of it.
Many more rounds of argument continue. ... BUT reallyREALLY continued!!! ( crying, threats, drama-at-it's-best).....One of the funniest 'student/teacher' dialogues ever!!!
Sam learns his mother -whom he has not seen for 20 years, is "Packer Attacker"
The plan is.... Samual will write a book about his mother-- a biography, an expose, a tell all. Hopefully this will satisfy Guy Periwinkle -his publisher for that advance check he received, too.
Part Two - Late Summer 1988- "Ghosts of the Old Country" .... is another page turning section. We are taken back to when Sam was just a boy. We get an inside look at his childhood - Sams disposition, his sensitivities, insecurities, fears, and relationship with his mother. Reading "Choose Your Own Adventure books", gave him comfort when his mother sent him to his room to read - or if he felt he needed to cry.
In August of 1988.... it's the month that Sam considers it his final month with his mother, even though she doesn't really physically walk out for a few more years. But for abstract reasons, all he knew is this was the month.... a time he need to cry often.
Constantly crying.
I read the next few pages very carefully- and parts two and three times -- as I was picking up lots of deeper clues as to what might be coming down the pipes further into the novel .. plus I was sad.
There is a scene when Faye tells little Sam to bring 9 toys and put them in his wagon as they are going for a walk...
I felt for this little kid. And when there was a moment when Sam buried his face in the hot passenger seat weeping, with his mother sitting next to him....I somehow knew - like Sam knew -at that moment he was alone in the world. Whatever illusions he had for protection from his mothers love- was gone.
And soon we learn why this book is called "The Nix". To me it's so much the heart of this story - that EVERYTHING I read after --no matter what direction it spins off into...
family matters of anger - resentments - of understanding the past - and healing old scars, or the democratic convention in Chicago 1968, the Republican convention in New York, protests of Wall Street, childhood friends, the news media, or the crazy crime that brings Faye Andersen-Anderson into the limelight....I couldn't help but to think about the 'duo' NIX.
The first Nix... comes from the Ghost Story that Faye's father told her when she was a child back in Norway.
THE PLOT OF THE STORY IS THE SAME for NIX 1 and Nix 2.....( which is a story that once read once is very hard to forget)....
But in NIX 1..... The moral of the story ends with: "Don't trust things that are too good to be true".
In NIX 2....Faye changes the moral of the story for 'little Sam' to:
"Things you love the most will one day hurt you the worst". Sam cries!
I wanted to fricken hit Faye Andersen-Anderson at that moment.
Moving on.....
Also in Part 2, we meet childhood friends Bishop and Bethany who are twins - brother and sister. Again we are taken deeper into in life of Sam. We are getting to know him more. We still have much to learn about his mother.
Later we will meet other characters in this expanding saga: Allen Ginsberg, Pwnage, street people, etc.
Part 3 late summer 2011... enemy, obstacle, puzzle, trap
Sam meets his mother after 20 years - asks why she threw rocks at the governor
Laura is back in the story ( always fun when she takes center stage)
Memories with mom & dad & grandpa Frank
Part 4 Spring 1968 The house Spirit
Faye and Henry go to Senior Prom- fall in love -
There are secrets
Father daughter problems. Faye will either get closer to her father are fling apart forever.
Part 10.... Late Summer 2011 Deleveraging. Sam- Faye - Guy
I hope by writing this review the way I have - you get a glimpse of the structure. There are 10 parts. I did this hoping that readers can see, that when you break the book down it actually reads rather quickly, fluidly, and it's deeply emotional.
At the book's core - this is a story about a son and his mother...but it's also about family, politics, love, lovers, loss, regret, truth, devotion, and the gritty pains of life.
Nathan Hill's novel is a brilliant achievement- poignant- entertaining-and becomes impossible to resist. Sooooo soooo ENJOYABLE!!!!
All I knew about "The Nix" before I started reading my 625 page physical book, was the 'few' things I heard, ( "GOOD", "GREAT", "TERRIFIC WRITING", "SIMILAR to JONATHAN FRANZEN"......all of which I agree by the way), but I purposely have not read reviews-yet. I'm tempted to now....but I'll wait -- enjoy what other readers have to say soon.
Not one person told me how incredibly ENJOYABLE the STORYTELLING was.
IMMEDIATELY I was pulled into the wonderful world of fiction. FANTASTIC NOVEL...one of my years favorites- for SURE!!!
In the prologue- summer 1988 - Samuel ( narrator), describes how his mother, slowly, bit, by bit "whittled down her life until the only thing left to remove was herself".
"On the day she disappeared, she left the house with a single suitcase".
Part 1 - late summer 2011 - "GOVERNOR, SHELDON PACKER, of Chicago, is ATTACKED".
The woman accused of the attack is Faye Andersen-Anderson. She is a teaching assistant at a local elementary school....considered a sixties radical hippie prostitute teacher.
We will be introduced to Guy Periwinkle- ( publisher) -- He and Sam will have there own running theme throughout this novel about Sam's novel which isn't finished for which he had received advance payment.
Samuel Anderson, is in his 30's, a College Literature Professor at a small University northwest of Chicago. He is also a struggling writer, and a game player in the virtual world. His game choice is "World of Elfscape". Samual plays 'Elfscape' from his University office, because he gets faster Internet connection than at home.
There's a hilarious scene about a student, Laura Pottsdam,(who wears sweatshorts with various words written across the butt), who handed in a plagiarized paper.
Laura is arguing with Samuel saying she did not cheat. Samuel is saying that according to the software, her essay came from FreeTermPapers.com.
Laura says she never heard of it.
Many more rounds of argument continue. ... BUT reallyREALLY continued!!! ( crying, threats, drama-at-it's-best).....One of the funniest 'student/teacher' dialogues ever!!!
Sam learns his mother -whom he has not seen for 20 years, is "Packer Attacker"
The plan is.... Samual will write a book about his mother-- a biography, an expose, a tell all. Hopefully this will satisfy Guy Periwinkle -his publisher for that advance check he received, too.
Part Two - Late Summer 1988- "Ghosts of the Old Country" .... is another page turning section. We are taken back to when Sam was just a boy. We get an inside look at his childhood - Sams disposition, his sensitivities, insecurities, fears, and relationship with his mother. Reading "Choose Your Own Adventure books", gave him comfort when his mother sent him to his room to read - or if he felt he needed to cry.
In August of 1988.... it's the month that Sam considers it his final month with his mother, even though she doesn't really physically walk out for a few more years. But for abstract reasons, all he knew is this was the month.... a time he need to cry often.
Constantly crying.
I read the next few pages very carefully- and parts two and three times -- as I was picking up lots of deeper clues as to what might be coming down the pipes further into the novel .. plus I was sad.
There is a scene when Faye tells little Sam to bring 9 toys and put them in his wagon as they are going for a walk...
I felt for this little kid. And when there was a moment when Sam buried his face in the hot passenger seat weeping, with his mother sitting next to him....I somehow knew - like Sam knew -at that moment he was alone in the world. Whatever illusions he had for protection from his mothers love- was gone.
And soon we learn why this book is called "The Nix". To me it's so much the heart of this story - that EVERYTHING I read after --no matter what direction it spins off into...
family matters of anger - resentments - of understanding the past - and healing old scars, or the democratic convention in Chicago 1968, the Republican convention in New York, protests of Wall Street, childhood friends, the news media, or the crazy crime that brings Faye Andersen-Anderson into the limelight....I couldn't help but to think about the 'duo' NIX.
The first Nix... comes from the Ghost Story that Faye's father told her when she was a child back in Norway.
THE PLOT OF THE STORY IS THE SAME for NIX 1 and Nix 2.....( which is a story that once read once is very hard to forget)....
But in NIX 1..... The moral of the story ends with: "Don't trust things that are too good to be true".
In NIX 2....Faye changes the moral of the story for 'little Sam' to:
"Things you love the most will one day hurt you the worst". Sam cries!
I wanted to fricken hit Faye Andersen-Anderson at that moment.
Moving on.....
Also in Part 2, we meet childhood friends Bishop and Bethany who are twins - brother and sister. Again we are taken deeper into in life of Sam. We are getting to know him more. We still have much to learn about his mother.
Later we will meet other characters in this expanding saga: Allen Ginsberg, Pwnage, street people, etc.
Part 3 late summer 2011... enemy, obstacle, puzzle, trap
Sam meets his mother after 20 years - asks why she threw rocks at the governor
Laura is back in the story ( always fun when she takes center stage)
Memories with mom & dad & grandpa Frank
Part 4 Spring 1968 The house Spirit
Faye and Henry go to Senior Prom- fall in love -
There are secrets
Father daughter problems. Faye will either get closer to her father are fling apart forever.
Part 10.... Late Summer 2011 Deleveraging. Sam- Faye - Guy
I hope by writing this review the way I have - you get a glimpse of the structure. There are 10 parts. I did this hoping that readers can see, that when you break the book down it actually reads rather quickly, fluidly, and it's deeply emotional.
At the book's core - this is a story about a son and his mother...but it's also about family, politics, love, lovers, loss, regret, truth, devotion, and the gritty pains of life.
Nathan Hill's novel is a brilliant achievement- poignant- entertaining-and becomes impossible to resist. Sooooo soooo ENJOYABLE!!!!
April 21, 2017
I'm not a huge fan of long novels. This one, however, was without a doubt worth the time.
Mother and son over the long haul, Faye and Samuel - a great unfolding and refolding of their relationship. Seriously talented storytelling at play here. Samuel, an oddly compelling and sympathetic character, a teacher struggling to get his act together. Faye, a woman somewhat off the wall for decades for good reasons and bad, an agent of cultural change with vexed measure of responsibility. There are a number of dizzying story lines that are shuffled together at a perfect pace with no loss of balance. Totally surprising, Hill masterfully used an online game called World of Elfscape with characters worthy of entire book for themselves. Remarkable! The reader gets to travel back to Norway in the 1940's, very cool, and other locales and time periods. There are many lesser characters all over the place that easily earned their time on the pages. The writing style varies with great success; almost as if there were multiple authors working together to produce this story. The occasional bouts of ranting in the book were fantastic material that took me slightly out of the action for a perfect position to reflect on the ongoing story; to the effect of pulling me in deeper and deeper.
After finishing the story, I feel I was played by Hill; played like some sort instrument capable of everything from Classical to Rock and Roll and anything else that will move your blood or shake you up the way you like - and have you willing to go on tour to wherever there is a call for music.
This book was intelligent, engrossing, and hands-down solid entertainment. A very memorable book. Nathan Hill is a writer to reckon with. I can't wait to get my hands on his next book.
Mother and son over the long haul, Faye and Samuel - a great unfolding and refolding of their relationship. Seriously talented storytelling at play here. Samuel, an oddly compelling and sympathetic character, a teacher struggling to get his act together. Faye, a woman somewhat off the wall for decades for good reasons and bad, an agent of cultural change with vexed measure of responsibility. There are a number of dizzying story lines that are shuffled together at a perfect pace with no loss of balance. Totally surprising, Hill masterfully used an online game called World of Elfscape with characters worthy of entire book for themselves. Remarkable! The reader gets to travel back to Norway in the 1940's, very cool, and other locales and time periods. There are many lesser characters all over the place that easily earned their time on the pages. The writing style varies with great success; almost as if there were multiple authors working together to produce this story. The occasional bouts of ranting in the book were fantastic material that took me slightly out of the action for a perfect position to reflect on the ongoing story; to the effect of pulling me in deeper and deeper.
After finishing the story, I feel I was played by Hill; played like some sort instrument capable of everything from Classical to Rock and Roll and anything else that will move your blood or shake you up the way you like - and have you willing to go on tour to wherever there is a call for music.
This book was intelligent, engrossing, and hands-down solid entertainment. A very memorable book. Nathan Hill is a writer to reckon with. I can't wait to get my hands on his next book.
May 22, 2019
Reader*,
The Nix is exactly the type of novel I dread reviewing: one that has many good moments, some truly great moments, but is a letdown most consistently.
Though my background is in science and medicine, my heart will always be with the written word. I may not have an extensive academic background in literature, but I do try and make up for it with an avid reading habit, dipping my toes into various styles and genres. So, although I might not be the foremost authority, I think I can pick the good from the bad with relative internal consistency.
It was a surprise, then, that The Nix first astonished me only to leave me frustrated with its monotony. It is also my hope that my suggestion that we read this book as our first book club-by-mail selection has not left you disenchanted with the concept. Indeed, it would perhaps be most interesting if your opinion differed from mine so as to stimulate discussion. But, I digress from an actual critique of the novel in question.
The Nix has a really appealing, and topical, premise: a woman is caught on video attacking a nationalist republican presidential candidate on the campaign trail. Samuel is tapped to write an expose on the mother who abandoned him as a child and her attack on the aforementioned presidential candidate. The dust-jacket sells you on a few other topics that tick the checkboxes for literary fiction award-winner candidates: magical realism, Vietnam War protest, intergenerational family saga, video game culture, and academia.
This hodgepodge of subject matter covered in The Nix earns author Nathan Hill book-selling quotes on the back of his book that are variants of the following:
� ”Grand in scope, sprawling, Dickensian. An achievement in the field that should be on every serious reader’s shelf.�
� “Hill pulls from the vast tapestry that has shaped modern America to build a moving novel for the internet age.�
� “Expansive, yet intimate, The Nix succeeds on every level.�
The scope and subject matter here sure make for an interesting tapestry in theory. However, in practice, the book failed to make this reader feel as if he were reading a cohesive work. Instead, it felt a bit like two or three books stitched together, and unfortunately, Hill leaves easily visible suture lines. He touches on all these different topics, jumping from a scene about the Chicago riots to a, I KID YOU NOT, 10-page sentence about quitting an massive multiplayer online game. Did you enjoy that scene? I was astonished only in that it continued on, page after page, and by the end of it seemed more a cute experiment than something that added something to the main thrust of the book.
But therein lies another problem: I’m not really sure what The Nix is trying to say. That in and of itself is not a problem: I love a book that makes me think, reflect, and even reread in order to grasp a message. However, the threads, plotlines, and diversions in The Nix muddled the meaning Hill tries to establish through his two main characters: Samuel and his mother, Faye.
At first I was compelled by kind-of-loser Samuel’s frustrations with his professorial career and the biting satire of today’s university atmosphere. For the first 100 pages or so, the book had me and I would have gladly continued on with satire of the election, university, and activism. Even though a few of these characters (namely, Laura Pottsdam) seem to be such gross caricatures that they sometimes butt against the realism of the novel.
Speaking frankly, the flashbacks to Samuel’s childhood and Faye’s coming of age didn’t do anything for me. They always seemed like diversions from the main story and it felt like Hill wanted to play around a bit in the late 60s with some different viewpoints. Of course, there’s some parallels drawn between the 1968 Chicago Vietnam War protests and the Occupy Movement/SJWs, which I enjoyed but didn’t seem fully developed. I’ll admit that I can’t quite put my finger on the message Hill’s trying to convey, but hopefully you’ve got some thoughts to bounce back and forth between us.
With all of that said, there’s quite a lot I enjoyed in this book. There were paragraphs and passages that really impressed me throughout the read. Sentences that made me stop and go, Man, this guy’s got chops! Of course, finding these passages were rare treats amidst the drudgery of long passages where the characters spend a long time analyzing their thoughts, actions, and potential actions. Toward the book’s end I enjoyed the scenes set in Norway and, indeed, these scenes are the ones that rang most true to me.
For what has been a mostly negative review, I would easily pick up another book written by Hill. As I said before, the man can write, but The Nix loses focus so often that it doesn’t make for a tale that compelled me the whole way through. It is my hope that Hill will write something a bit shorter, a bit more focused, and tackle a few topics rather than a grocery list.
I’m really interested to hear what you thought of this one. I’ve read a few other reviews and I definitely seem to be in the minority. I’ll also confess to an exceptionally busy rotation that forced me to consume this book piecemeal, which might not be the best way to have handled it. The Nix is a book that I wouldn’t recommend to others, but was easily sold to me. I'm sure it'll be a contender for many awards this year and I wish it had done more for me.
Also, Samuel’s kind of a turd, didn’t you think?
Cheers,
Matt
*This review was written as a letter to my good friend, Grant Carson, as we embark upon a semi-regular book-club by distance.
The Nix is exactly the type of novel I dread reviewing: one that has many good moments, some truly great moments, but is a letdown most consistently.
Though my background is in science and medicine, my heart will always be with the written word. I may not have an extensive academic background in literature, but I do try and make up for it with an avid reading habit, dipping my toes into various styles and genres. So, although I might not be the foremost authority, I think I can pick the good from the bad with relative internal consistency.
It was a surprise, then, that The Nix first astonished me only to leave me frustrated with its monotony. It is also my hope that my suggestion that we read this book as our first book club-by-mail selection has not left you disenchanted with the concept. Indeed, it would perhaps be most interesting if your opinion differed from mine so as to stimulate discussion. But, I digress from an actual critique of the novel in question.
The Nix has a really appealing, and topical, premise: a woman is caught on video attacking a nationalist republican presidential candidate on the campaign trail. Samuel is tapped to write an expose on the mother who abandoned him as a child and her attack on the aforementioned presidential candidate. The dust-jacket sells you on a few other topics that tick the checkboxes for literary fiction award-winner candidates: magical realism, Vietnam War protest, intergenerational family saga, video game culture, and academia.
This hodgepodge of subject matter covered in The Nix earns author Nathan Hill book-selling quotes on the back of his book that are variants of the following:
� ”Grand in scope, sprawling, Dickensian. An achievement in the field that should be on every serious reader’s shelf.�
� “Hill pulls from the vast tapestry that has shaped modern America to build a moving novel for the internet age.�
� “Expansive, yet intimate, The Nix succeeds on every level.�
The scope and subject matter here sure make for an interesting tapestry in theory. However, in practice, the book failed to make this reader feel as if he were reading a cohesive work. Instead, it felt a bit like two or three books stitched together, and unfortunately, Hill leaves easily visible suture lines. He touches on all these different topics, jumping from a scene about the Chicago riots to a, I KID YOU NOT, 10-page sentence about quitting an massive multiplayer online game. Did you enjoy that scene? I was astonished only in that it continued on, page after page, and by the end of it seemed more a cute experiment than something that added something to the main thrust of the book.
But therein lies another problem: I’m not really sure what The Nix is trying to say. That in and of itself is not a problem: I love a book that makes me think, reflect, and even reread in order to grasp a message. However, the threads, plotlines, and diversions in The Nix muddled the meaning Hill tries to establish through his two main characters: Samuel and his mother, Faye.
At first I was compelled by kind-of-loser Samuel’s frustrations with his professorial career and the biting satire of today’s university atmosphere. For the first 100 pages or so, the book had me and I would have gladly continued on with satire of the election, university, and activism. Even though a few of these characters (namely, Laura Pottsdam) seem to be such gross caricatures that they sometimes butt against the realism of the novel.
Speaking frankly, the flashbacks to Samuel’s childhood and Faye’s coming of age didn’t do anything for me. They always seemed like diversions from the main story and it felt like Hill wanted to play around a bit in the late 60s with some different viewpoints. Of course, there’s some parallels drawn between the 1968 Chicago Vietnam War protests and the Occupy Movement/SJWs, which I enjoyed but didn’t seem fully developed. I’ll admit that I can’t quite put my finger on the message Hill’s trying to convey, but hopefully you’ve got some thoughts to bounce back and forth between us.
With all of that said, there’s quite a lot I enjoyed in this book. There were paragraphs and passages that really impressed me throughout the read. Sentences that made me stop and go, Man, this guy’s got chops! Of course, finding these passages were rare treats amidst the drudgery of long passages where the characters spend a long time analyzing their thoughts, actions, and potential actions. Toward the book’s end I enjoyed the scenes set in Norway and, indeed, these scenes are the ones that rang most true to me.
For what has been a mostly negative review, I would easily pick up another book written by Hill. As I said before, the man can write, but The Nix loses focus so often that it doesn’t make for a tale that compelled me the whole way through. It is my hope that Hill will write something a bit shorter, a bit more focused, and tackle a few topics rather than a grocery list.
I’m really interested to hear what you thought of this one. I’ve read a few other reviews and I definitely seem to be in the minority. I’ll also confess to an exceptionally busy rotation that forced me to consume this book piecemeal, which might not be the best way to have handled it. The Nix is a book that I wouldn’t recommend to others, but was easily sold to me. I'm sure it'll be a contender for many awards this year and I wish it had done more for me.
Also, Samuel’s kind of a turd, didn’t you think?
Cheers,
Matt
*This review was written as a letter to my good friend, Grant Carson, as we embark upon a semi-regular book-club by distance.
July 6, 2016
Guys: I know it's early but I'm going to proclaim this the best book I've read this year. I'm not kidding. I was sucked into this book from the first few pages, and couldn't put it down (at 600 pages, it was quite the arm exercise). Characters are all believably flawed without being dumb, the storyline makes sense, it all gets wrapped up at the end but leaves some questions unanswered (so we can talk about them in book club, weee!). The writing is superb. Lots of different styles, which normally drives me a little nuts because the author is trying to show off, but here it works. The book makes observations about many different things through the dialogue of the characters, so I will have to re-read it to underline some things. Your empathy for characters changes as you learn more about them (sometimes with these types of books, I don't really care about the supporting characters and jump over their chapters. Here, I did not). This book is entirely unpretentious, a slow burn of a read that will make you think these characters are people you actually know. I can't wait to hear what others think.
December 3, 2016
Update: This book deserves five stars. It's fantastic. Read it. Ignore the math below.
Well, Goodreaders, remember that time over the summer when I cheated on my library and found a smaller, closer library in a nearby town? Yeah, that's still going on. See my review of The Green Mile for more details, but things are going very well between us. So far I've picked up The Green Mile, Rabbit Run, and The Nix from this new library of mine, and those three books are some of my favorite reads of the year. My ratings for these books average 4.66666 six six six six six repeating. Very impressive, especially for an overly critical reviewer like me.
Anyway, I was skeptical of this book from the very beginning since it kept showing up in my feed as a sponsored book. Over and over and over again. And those big colorful letters, I just couldn't help but recognize it in the library. The giant font and colors on the spine screamed at me from the shelf. I saw it and thought about how I keep seeing it everywhere and so I immediately felt like it couldn't be that great. If it were so awesome why does ŷ have to keep marketing it to me? But those bright colors, man. I couldn't resist.
So I grab the book and rush over to check out. I got home and I started wondering why I even picked it up. The plot seemed interesting, but I'm not really a 600+ page book kinda guy. I like books to be about half that size. But then I started reading and I got sucked into the story right away. I was knocking out dozens of pages without even thinking about it. I put it down for a few days and came back to it and couldn't put it down again. Now that I've finished it, I'm missing the characters I spent so much time with throughout this journey.
And what a journey is was! It bounces around to different characters and time periods with pretty short chapters that keep the pages turning. This guy is hilarious, too, with some chapters making me laugh out loud... I'm looking at you Pwnage. Yep, he's a character in this crazy story. So much happens in the book and the author goes on some tangents at times that pull away from he main plot, but it's all so fun to read. At times I was bummed because I got to a new section and had to go back in time again, but those sections were just as engaging and fun to read.
It's pretty impressive that this is Hill's first book. He definitely has the formula down and can weave a fantastic story together. I'm really looking forward to seeing what else this guy can do. He made me a believer with just a few pages. I'm telling you, this story is gonna stick with you. If you are a hippie, War protestor, online gaming enthusiast, professor, college student, musician, trouble maker, publisher, liberal, or just a regular person who loves a great story with lots of humor, this is a book you need to read soon.
Don't throw rocks at politicians.
Well, Goodreaders, remember that time over the summer when I cheated on my library and found a smaller, closer library in a nearby town? Yeah, that's still going on. See my review of The Green Mile for more details, but things are going very well between us. So far I've picked up The Green Mile, Rabbit Run, and The Nix from this new library of mine, and those three books are some of my favorite reads of the year. My ratings for these books average 4.66666 six six six six six repeating. Very impressive, especially for an overly critical reviewer like me.
Anyway, I was skeptical of this book from the very beginning since it kept showing up in my feed as a sponsored book. Over and over and over again. And those big colorful letters, I just couldn't help but recognize it in the library. The giant font and colors on the spine screamed at me from the shelf. I saw it and thought about how I keep seeing it everywhere and so I immediately felt like it couldn't be that great. If it were so awesome why does ŷ have to keep marketing it to me? But those bright colors, man. I couldn't resist.
So I grab the book and rush over to check out. I got home and I started wondering why I even picked it up. The plot seemed interesting, but I'm not really a 600+ page book kinda guy. I like books to be about half that size. But then I started reading and I got sucked into the story right away. I was knocking out dozens of pages without even thinking about it. I put it down for a few days and came back to it and couldn't put it down again. Now that I've finished it, I'm missing the characters I spent so much time with throughout this journey.
And what a journey is was! It bounces around to different characters and time periods with pretty short chapters that keep the pages turning. This guy is hilarious, too, with some chapters making me laugh out loud... I'm looking at you Pwnage. Yep, he's a character in this crazy story. So much happens in the book and the author goes on some tangents at times that pull away from he main plot, but it's all so fun to read. At times I was bummed because I got to a new section and had to go back in time again, but those sections were just as engaging and fun to read.
It's pretty impressive that this is Hill's first book. He definitely has the formula down and can weave a fantastic story together. I'm really looking forward to seeing what else this guy can do. He made me a believer with just a few pages. I'm telling you, this story is gonna stick with you. If you are a hippie, War protestor, online gaming enthusiast, professor, college student, musician, trouble maker, publisher, liberal, or just a regular person who loves a great story with lots of humor, this is a book you need to read soon.
Don't throw rocks at politicians.
December 27, 2016
This is a smart and terrific novel that packs one hell of a punch. It is a sprawling and intricate puzzle that goes back and forth in time to eventually make sense. It is a satire of the politics and media with timely observations and insights of the state of the nation captured in a clever and astute manner. There is the dissection of the lives of Sam, his mother, Faye and other characters. The eponymous Nix is Norwegian in origin, a metaphor, a tricky house spirit/ghost/white horse that is easily offended and proceeds to curse and destroy your entire life.
In 2011, Sam is a video games junkie and a washed up literature professor in a mediocre Chicago college. He has failed to produce a book for which his publisher, Guy Periwinkle, issued a significant advance. His mother, Faye, left the family when he was a young boy. Faye is now a teaching assistant who throws a rock at repulsive, right wing, Wyoming politician, Sheldon Parker in Grant Park, Chicago and refers to him as 'You pig'. This incident is an internet sensation and the media go into overdrive labelling Faye a prostitute and terrorist. A bitter Sam reconnects with Faye which propels him to delve into her life. We learn more about Sam's life and a more human picture emerges of Sam and Faye. It turns out they have much in common. We have the ongoing saga of Sam and the off the rails Laura, a plagiarist student, who will do anything to escape the consequences of her actions.
There are many perspectives given and multiple twists. Short chapters keep the story moving and the reader absorbed in the book. More than anything it is the wonderful characters that drive the story. It is a novel with big ideas and themes. There is family conflict and secrets and it hones in on the idea of how we see ourselves. It touches on relationships, trust and loyalty with friends, lovers, parents and children. It is cynical, full of intrigue and has plentiful humour. A fantastic story that captures the US in its current state so well. For me, it is an irresistable and brilliant read. Highly recommended. Thanks to Pan MacMillan for an ARC.
In 2011, Sam is a video games junkie and a washed up literature professor in a mediocre Chicago college. He has failed to produce a book for which his publisher, Guy Periwinkle, issued a significant advance. His mother, Faye, left the family when he was a young boy. Faye is now a teaching assistant who throws a rock at repulsive, right wing, Wyoming politician, Sheldon Parker in Grant Park, Chicago and refers to him as 'You pig'. This incident is an internet sensation and the media go into overdrive labelling Faye a prostitute and terrorist. A bitter Sam reconnects with Faye which propels him to delve into her life. We learn more about Sam's life and a more human picture emerges of Sam and Faye. It turns out they have much in common. We have the ongoing saga of Sam and the off the rails Laura, a plagiarist student, who will do anything to escape the consequences of her actions.
There are many perspectives given and multiple twists. Short chapters keep the story moving and the reader absorbed in the book. More than anything it is the wonderful characters that drive the story. It is a novel with big ideas and themes. There is family conflict and secrets and it hones in on the idea of how we see ourselves. It touches on relationships, trust and loyalty with friends, lovers, parents and children. It is cynical, full of intrigue and has plentiful humour. A fantastic story that captures the US in its current state so well. For me, it is an irresistable and brilliant read. Highly recommended. Thanks to Pan MacMillan for an ARC.
April 4, 2017
First off, a confession. I took a quick look at Nathan Hill’s photo and immediately thought: young guy, kind of a bro, probably pretty full of himself. And when I learned this was his first novel � a long one at that � I figured on narrative sprawl and other excesses. Would he be judicious enough to drop weaker scenes? Could he bear eliminating superfluous modifiers? Would every perceived insight seem indispensable? But the book was producing a buzz, one Santa figured would suit me. I’m glad. It was clear early on that Hill would breathe real life into his characters. He’d be thorough, but not boring. He’d span quite a few years, mostly 1968, 1988, and 2011, doing enough homework to get the details of each setting right. I was especially impressed by his account of Daley cops thumping heads in �68. And those insights I was afraid he might overvalue? They turned out to be genuine, even vital.
The plot is hard to summarize so I’ll just touch on the highlights. Samuel Andresen-Anderson is a failed writer in his 30s teaching English at a liberal arts school near Chicago. He’s getting more disenchanted by the year. His solace is an online role-playing game called World of Elfscape, though as solaces go, it’s a hollow one. Much of his angst stemmed from childhood when his mother abandoned him. A more immediate problem is a student he caught plagiarizing � one talented at working the system, meaning more trouble for him than for her. (My wife who used to be in academics got a jolt of déjà vu from this section.) Then there’s news of his mom. National news. She had been arrested for throwing gravel (or rocks, depending on who’s reporting it), at some reactionary, nut-job politician. Faye (his mom) was suddenly back in his life. The news teams were quick to find photos of Faye among the protesters in Chicago in �68, all unbeknownst to Samuel. He had thought she’d lived a quiet life in Iowa, marrying her high school sweetheart soon after graduating. Now she needs help that he’s wary of giving.
That’s the launching pad. The plot shoots off in multiple directions from there, much of it backwards in time. Among other things, you get a boyhood friend into war games, the friends� twin sister (a violin virtuoso and object of Samuel’s devotion), Faye’s undeserved miseries growing up, her father’s story dating back to his youth in Norway, Samuel’s gaming friend with an online addiction that’s plausible and scary, and Samuel’s literary agent who has his finger on the pulse of a nation replete with schlock, cynicism, and sanctimony. Oh, and I almost forgot. You get the Nix. This is a kind of house spirit that means different things to different people. I thought of it as combination of folklore and conscience, prejudicially deciding whether you deserved a pat on the back or a boot in the pants. Young Faye’s was quick to accuse and slow to let go.
It’s a big, multi-themed book that some have labelled a mess. But in my mind the ambition paid off. For a while, I’ll admit, I felt like certain sentences could have been honed. For instance, when you read that “she was accommodating, docile, self-effacing, compliant, easy to get along with,� does it feel like the thesaurus was overworked, drained, exhausted, worn out? That feeling of excess soon went away, though. I’d lost myself in the story and thought not a whit about style.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice a recent reviewing phenomenon where any societal ill that a book tackles is interpreted with orange-colored glasses. That Trumpian tincture now shades everything, it seems. We may well expect to hear how frightening and dire the darkness to come will be in Goodnight Moon given the looming shadows of the current administration. Even so, I feel like the applicability in this case is worth mentioning. Hill finished writing The Nix in 2014, a time when real estate and reality TV were enough to sustain Trump’s ego. While it may not seem as remarkable as Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, Hill’s preconceptions do seem uncanny. His Republican presidential hopeful was an anti-elitist, anti-immigration demagogue, not above "callously milking this minor distraction (Faye’s gravel) for all it's worth." (Or was he "bravely continuing his campaign despite tremendous personal risk?" It depended on the cable news personality doing the reporting.) And how about this quote by Samuel’s agent for describing a balky electorate? "...it's way easier to ignore all data that doesn't fit your preconceptions and believe all data that does. I believe what I believe, and you believe what you believe, and we'll agree to disagree. It's liberal tolerance meets dark ages denialism. It's very hip right now."
As for the assortment of other themes, Hill had plenty of thoughts covering those, too. Samuel’s aforementioned agent was entertaining as he attempted to justify commercialism in the arts. Selling out is honest when your stated goal is financial success (or something to that effect). Then there was a mini-motif on the vacuity of social media. The plagiarizing student had an app that allowed her to state which among a predefined set of emotions she was feeling. Friends could then respond accordingly with a feeling of their own, presumably something like “glad you’re happy� or “sorry you’re sad.� For convenience, there was an auto-response mode where the app would choose reactions for you. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would want an option for feeling cynical. Samuel’s gaming buddy, Pwnage, gave Hill a chance to expand on yet another theme: the perils of online addiction. (Hill said he had once been a World of Warcraft junkie, enough so to know the type.) The alternate realities can impinge on the primary ones pretty easily when you like your avatar better than yourself.
Pwnage did offer Samuel some useful advice from his gaming experience. He would approach each problem as either a trap, an obstacle, or a puzzle. Applying this to people, Samuel figured “if you see people as enemies or obstacles or traps, you will be at constant war with them and with yourself. Whereas if you choose to see people as puzzles, and if you see yourself as a puzzle, then you will be constantly delighted, because eventually, if you dig deep enough into anybody, if you really look under the hood of someone's life, you will find something familiar.� This homage to empathy reverberated. In fact, had this willingness to dig into each character been Hill’s only accomplishment, it still would have been quite a book. On top of that, though, we get top-notch storytelling, some strong commentary, a bit of fun and entertainment, and maybe enough hope for the future that even those wearing orange-colored glasses may feel encouraged.
I’m giving this a very solid 4.5 stars. Evidently J.J. Abrams really liked it, too, since he now has the TV rights to produce it. What’s more, Meryl Streep has signed on to play Faye. But hey, Goodreading friends, do read the book first.
The plot is hard to summarize so I’ll just touch on the highlights. Samuel Andresen-Anderson is a failed writer in his 30s teaching English at a liberal arts school near Chicago. He’s getting more disenchanted by the year. His solace is an online role-playing game called World of Elfscape, though as solaces go, it’s a hollow one. Much of his angst stemmed from childhood when his mother abandoned him. A more immediate problem is a student he caught plagiarizing � one talented at working the system, meaning more trouble for him than for her. (My wife who used to be in academics got a jolt of déjà vu from this section.) Then there’s news of his mom. National news. She had been arrested for throwing gravel (or rocks, depending on who’s reporting it), at some reactionary, nut-job politician. Faye (his mom) was suddenly back in his life. The news teams were quick to find photos of Faye among the protesters in Chicago in �68, all unbeknownst to Samuel. He had thought she’d lived a quiet life in Iowa, marrying her high school sweetheart soon after graduating. Now she needs help that he’s wary of giving.
That’s the launching pad. The plot shoots off in multiple directions from there, much of it backwards in time. Among other things, you get a boyhood friend into war games, the friends� twin sister (a violin virtuoso and object of Samuel’s devotion), Faye’s undeserved miseries growing up, her father’s story dating back to his youth in Norway, Samuel’s gaming friend with an online addiction that’s plausible and scary, and Samuel’s literary agent who has his finger on the pulse of a nation replete with schlock, cynicism, and sanctimony. Oh, and I almost forgot. You get the Nix. This is a kind of house spirit that means different things to different people. I thought of it as combination of folklore and conscience, prejudicially deciding whether you deserved a pat on the back or a boot in the pants. Young Faye’s was quick to accuse and slow to let go.
It’s a big, multi-themed book that some have labelled a mess. But in my mind the ambition paid off. For a while, I’ll admit, I felt like certain sentences could have been honed. For instance, when you read that “she was accommodating, docile, self-effacing, compliant, easy to get along with,� does it feel like the thesaurus was overworked, drained, exhausted, worn out? That feeling of excess soon went away, though. I’d lost myself in the story and thought not a whit about style.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice a recent reviewing phenomenon where any societal ill that a book tackles is interpreted with orange-colored glasses. That Trumpian tincture now shades everything, it seems. We may well expect to hear how frightening and dire the darkness to come will be in Goodnight Moon given the looming shadows of the current administration. Even so, I feel like the applicability in this case is worth mentioning. Hill finished writing The Nix in 2014, a time when real estate and reality TV were enough to sustain Trump’s ego. While it may not seem as remarkable as Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, Hill’s preconceptions do seem uncanny. His Republican presidential hopeful was an anti-elitist, anti-immigration demagogue, not above "callously milking this minor distraction (Faye’s gravel) for all it's worth." (Or was he "bravely continuing his campaign despite tremendous personal risk?" It depended on the cable news personality doing the reporting.) And how about this quote by Samuel’s agent for describing a balky electorate? "...it's way easier to ignore all data that doesn't fit your preconceptions and believe all data that does. I believe what I believe, and you believe what you believe, and we'll agree to disagree. It's liberal tolerance meets dark ages denialism. It's very hip right now."
As for the assortment of other themes, Hill had plenty of thoughts covering those, too. Samuel’s aforementioned agent was entertaining as he attempted to justify commercialism in the arts. Selling out is honest when your stated goal is financial success (or something to that effect). Then there was a mini-motif on the vacuity of social media. The plagiarizing student had an app that allowed her to state which among a predefined set of emotions she was feeling. Friends could then respond accordingly with a feeling of their own, presumably something like “glad you’re happy� or “sorry you’re sad.� For convenience, there was an auto-response mode where the app would choose reactions for you. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would want an option for feeling cynical. Samuel’s gaming buddy, Pwnage, gave Hill a chance to expand on yet another theme: the perils of online addiction. (Hill said he had once been a World of Warcraft junkie, enough so to know the type.) The alternate realities can impinge on the primary ones pretty easily when you like your avatar better than yourself.
Pwnage did offer Samuel some useful advice from his gaming experience. He would approach each problem as either a trap, an obstacle, or a puzzle. Applying this to people, Samuel figured “if you see people as enemies or obstacles or traps, you will be at constant war with them and with yourself. Whereas if you choose to see people as puzzles, and if you see yourself as a puzzle, then you will be constantly delighted, because eventually, if you dig deep enough into anybody, if you really look under the hood of someone's life, you will find something familiar.� This homage to empathy reverberated. In fact, had this willingness to dig into each character been Hill’s only accomplishment, it still would have been quite a book. On top of that, though, we get top-notch storytelling, some strong commentary, a bit of fun and entertainment, and maybe enough hope for the future that even those wearing orange-colored glasses may feel encouraged.
I’m giving this a very solid 4.5 stars. Evidently J.J. Abrams really liked it, too, since he now has the TV rights to produce it. What’s more, Meryl Streep has signed on to play Faye. But hey, Goodreading friends, do read the book first.
March 28, 2024
I’d glanced at ratings for this book - uniformly four or five stars from my book reading friends - and had read enough of the accompanying commentaries to know that this was a big book, at over 600 pages, covering a lump of time from the late 1960’s onward. I’d also gleaned that it was a family saga, with some political history thrown in for good measure. All good so far. What I’d no doubt have discovered if I’d dug a little deeper is that this book is brilliantly written in a style that reminded me of esteemed pensmiths such as Donna Tartt and Tom Wolfe. It also includes a wry and often hilarious look at how social media and online gaming have gained such a foothold in the lives of so many people in the 21st century.
It’s a book that jumps back and forth in time. Early on, we meet an eleven-year-old Samuel (Sam) Andresen-Anderson, a boy who cries a good deal. He is befriended by Bishop, a similarly aged, confident boy from his neighbourhood who already has career ambitions to be a soldier. Bishop introduces Sam to Bethany, his twin sister. Sam is instantly entranced by Bethany. The first major trauma in Sam’s life has already been signalled in the opening of the book but now it’s acted out in full: his mother, having clearly planned her escape in advance, walks away from the family home, never to return. Later, the loose ends left by these early encounters and events will be fleshed out � deliciously so.
As the story plays forward, we see that Sam has become an English literature professor and is having problems with one of his students. Laura Pottsdam decided some time ago that cheating her way to a degree is the way to go, and she’s not happy that Sam has rumbled the fact that her latest paper is an act of pure plagiarism Sam really is too busy keeping up with her vast array of acquaintances on the social network, I feel, to have time to actually research and write a paper of her own. Not one to bow down to authority, Laura will find a way of combatting her professor’s annoying accusation, that's for sure.
Sam is very much the lead character here, and it’s through him that we continue to meet the rest of the cast, even as we start to realise what a mess his life really is. It would appear that as an aspiring writer, he managed to secure a substantial advance for a book he has yet to write. The money is, of course, already spent, and the publisher is now demanding the return of the lucre. To add to Sam’s woes, he has no woman in his life and all his non-working time is entirely taken up by his addiction to an on-line game called World of Elfscape (easily identified as a close cousin of a certain ever expanding game my nineteen-year-old son seems similarly addicted to!) We will spend quite a bit of time in Word of Elsfscape, where we will also meet ‘Pwnage� the game name for a fellow gaming addict and acknowledged master Eflscape raider � and probably my favourite character of all.
I’m not giving much away here as all these events occur very early on. From this point, the fractured narrative takes us on a big ride through the decades as major events unfold, questions are asked and answered, and the lives of our characters are lived. It’s a truly spectacular piece of fiction. The novel mixes serious observation on real events (though the author has confessed he took some liberties with the fine detail), deep personal tragedy, and absolute hilarity. And it does all of this brilliantly well, whilst telling a complex and compelling story that kept me glued to the text throughout.
If I were looking for a criticism, it might be that there are some sections that do jabber on a bit. Could some passages have been selectively pruned? Well, yes, but I’m not sure that this would have improved the book. Instead, I think it would have been to its overall detriment. I believe these rambles are part of the soul of this piece. The writing is top drawer, and each character and each event has its place in the overall puzzle. At no point did I become lost in the maze or bored by a particular character or switched off by a protracted rant � it all fits together, it’s all part of the overall prize. Reading this book was a wonderful adventure, and I’m really sad I’ll not be waking up tomorrow to eagerly gobble up the next chapter or two. I already miss it.
My sincere thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for providing an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
It’s a book that jumps back and forth in time. Early on, we meet an eleven-year-old Samuel (Sam) Andresen-Anderson, a boy who cries a good deal. He is befriended by Bishop, a similarly aged, confident boy from his neighbourhood who already has career ambitions to be a soldier. Bishop introduces Sam to Bethany, his twin sister. Sam is instantly entranced by Bethany. The first major trauma in Sam’s life has already been signalled in the opening of the book but now it’s acted out in full: his mother, having clearly planned her escape in advance, walks away from the family home, never to return. Later, the loose ends left by these early encounters and events will be fleshed out � deliciously so.
As the story plays forward, we see that Sam has become an English literature professor and is having problems with one of his students. Laura Pottsdam decided some time ago that cheating her way to a degree is the way to go, and she’s not happy that Sam has rumbled the fact that her latest paper is an act of pure plagiarism Sam really is too busy keeping up with her vast array of acquaintances on the social network, I feel, to have time to actually research and write a paper of her own. Not one to bow down to authority, Laura will find a way of combatting her professor’s annoying accusation, that's for sure.
Sam is very much the lead character here, and it’s through him that we continue to meet the rest of the cast, even as we start to realise what a mess his life really is. It would appear that as an aspiring writer, he managed to secure a substantial advance for a book he has yet to write. The money is, of course, already spent, and the publisher is now demanding the return of the lucre. To add to Sam’s woes, he has no woman in his life and all his non-working time is entirely taken up by his addiction to an on-line game called World of Elfscape (easily identified as a close cousin of a certain ever expanding game my nineteen-year-old son seems similarly addicted to!) We will spend quite a bit of time in Word of Elsfscape, where we will also meet ‘Pwnage� the game name for a fellow gaming addict and acknowledged master Eflscape raider � and probably my favourite character of all.
I’m not giving much away here as all these events occur very early on. From this point, the fractured narrative takes us on a big ride through the decades as major events unfold, questions are asked and answered, and the lives of our characters are lived. It’s a truly spectacular piece of fiction. The novel mixes serious observation on real events (though the author has confessed he took some liberties with the fine detail), deep personal tragedy, and absolute hilarity. And it does all of this brilliantly well, whilst telling a complex and compelling story that kept me glued to the text throughout.
If I were looking for a criticism, it might be that there are some sections that do jabber on a bit. Could some passages have been selectively pruned? Well, yes, but I’m not sure that this would have improved the book. Instead, I think it would have been to its overall detriment. I believe these rambles are part of the soul of this piece. The writing is top drawer, and each character and each event has its place in the overall puzzle. At no point did I become lost in the maze or bored by a particular character or switched off by a protracted rant � it all fits together, it’s all part of the overall prize. Reading this book was a wonderful adventure, and I’m really sad I’ll not be waking up tomorrow to eagerly gobble up the next chapter or two. I already miss it.
My sincere thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for providing an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
March 21, 2019
"Seeing ourselves clearly is the project of a lifetime."
- Nathan Hill, The Nix
Even though I don’t read a ton of contemporary fiction, I do a pretty good job of knowing what’s out there. In fact, I spend roughly as much time reading about reading as I do actually reading. And I have the sagging bookshelves of yet-to-be-read titles to prove it. Based on what I’d read about Nathan Hill’s The Nix, I had a single thought: nope. Everything about it is everything I don’t like in literature.
A lengthy novel weighted with important themes (bad parents, betrayal, and self-deception) written by a first time novelist whose previous contributions were short stories in “literary journals� (which reeks of the insufferable and pretentious) and filled with quirky affectations (a character who literally can’t stop himself from crying), silly names (Guy Periwinkle), a protagonist who is a struggling writer (pure navel gazing) and a self-consciously complicated structure of interlocking plotlines? No thanks.
Bottom line: this is typically a hard pass for me.
Then it was chosen by the Eastern Nebraska Men’s Biblio & Social Club. If there’s one thing the ENMB&SC likes, it’s drinking beer and talking books. If there’s one thing the ENMB&SC doesn’t like, it’s when a member doesn’t even try to read the month’s selection. Before each meeting we have a ritual shaming session. Anyone who hasn’t read the book is liable for a round or two at the bar. Since I am cheap, and since I like having an opinion at book club, I decided, grudgingly, to give this a try.
By now you’ve probably figured that I ended up loving it. (Burying the lede is a thing I do). Well, it’s true. I loved it! This is a big and brilliant romp filled with indelible characters, one tremendous action set-piece, sharp comedic bits, and more than a few moments of exquisite poignancy.
(The title, taken from Norwegian folkore, is also explained, but I’ll leave that to you and your own book club to discover and parse).
The Nix begins in 2011, with the kind of ridiculous plot-inciter that worried me in the first place. A woman named Faye Anderson has “assaulted� the conservative governor of Wyoming, Sheldon Packer, who is planning a run for the presidency. Immediately dubbed the “Packer Attacker�, Faye finds herself in some serious legal trouble.
Faye’s notoriety draws her back into the life of her estranged son, an English professor named Samuel Andresen-Anderson, who she abandoned at a very young age. For reasons that are too convoluted to explain � and which I don’t want to spoil � Samuel embarks on a journey to unearth his mother’s past, and to determine why she left him.
Hill tells his story by utilizing several different timelines. The book’s “present� is in 2011, with Samuel searching for clues, and Faye biding her time with an attorney with hyperhidrosis. (Like I said, there are affectations aplenty). The second major timeline takes place in 1968. This reveals Faye’s journey from her small hometown to Chicago, where she arrives at college just in time for the Democratic National Convention. There are also flashbacks to Samuel’s motherless childhood, focusing on his relationship with the Fall twins, Bishop and Bethany.
Hill is a fantastic and accessible writer. His descriptions are mesmerizing, his grasp of detail impeccable. His characterizations are great, even though some of his characters come off a bit one-dimensional. Take, for instance, his portrayal of Pwnage, a gamer obsessed with World of Elfscape, an online swords-and-orcs game modeled after World of Warcraft. Pwnage is a man whose brain chemistry has been rewired, and Hill takes us through his mental processes in brutal and hilarious fashion. In one passage, Pwnage is meditating on his use of a smartphone app to eat healthier:
The Nix is filled with such passages, which do a remarkable job of mimicking the interior mechanics of each particular character.
I'm under no illusion that this will be universally beloved. The Nix is a flawed masterpiece. There are times when Hill’s talent is a bit too evident. He is, in other words, showing off. At one point he writes a sentence that goes on for a page or two. During the 1968 Democratic Convention sequence, Hill starts randomly popping into the minds of Walter Cronkite and Hubert Humphrey, seemingly for no other reason than to dazzle us with his cleverness. There are certain subplots (a cheating student in Samuel’s class) that don’t really pay off, at least not in terms of how much time is devoted to the setup. I also found some of his observations to be a bit trite. Online gaming, cable news, and the modern airport are pretty low-hanging fruit as targets for biting critiques. At one point, a character feels some vague despair at watching Americans line up for a meal at McDonalds. Seriously? Can we call a moratorium on fast food as a symbol of ennui and existential crisis? It’s not that bad! Especially not the breakfast!
When I think about how these things bothered me, I am instantly reminded of all the parts of The Nix that soared. For every broad flourish, there are ten or twenty perfectly realized scenes of grace, of heartbreak, of love and war, of betrayal, of false starts, of stunted dreams, of belated realizations. There is a scene between young-adult Samuel and Bethany (with whom Samuel is in love) in New York City that is constructed with such tenderness and fragility that it felt like I read it under a spell. Hill can be a bit obnoxious in displaying his gifts. He can also be a freaking word-magician.
This is a novels that reads downhill. The deeper you get into it, the more momentum it builds. The different timelines start to communicate with each other across time and space; things that had one meaning take on another; people we viewed one way, suddenly require a second look. When you finish, you’re a bit exhausted, but you’re left wanting to return, to know what these characters will do with the knowledge they have gained.
- Nathan Hill, The Nix
Even though I don’t read a ton of contemporary fiction, I do a pretty good job of knowing what’s out there. In fact, I spend roughly as much time reading about reading as I do actually reading. And I have the sagging bookshelves of yet-to-be-read titles to prove it. Based on what I’d read about Nathan Hill’s The Nix, I had a single thought: nope. Everything about it is everything I don’t like in literature.
A lengthy novel weighted with important themes (bad parents, betrayal, and self-deception) written by a first time novelist whose previous contributions were short stories in “literary journals� (which reeks of the insufferable and pretentious) and filled with quirky affectations (a character who literally can’t stop himself from crying), silly names (Guy Periwinkle), a protagonist who is a struggling writer (pure navel gazing) and a self-consciously complicated structure of interlocking plotlines? No thanks.
Bottom line: this is typically a hard pass for me.
Then it was chosen by the Eastern Nebraska Men’s Biblio & Social Club. If there’s one thing the ENMB&SC likes, it’s drinking beer and talking books. If there’s one thing the ENMB&SC doesn’t like, it’s when a member doesn’t even try to read the month’s selection. Before each meeting we have a ritual shaming session. Anyone who hasn’t read the book is liable for a round or two at the bar. Since I am cheap, and since I like having an opinion at book club, I decided, grudgingly, to give this a try.
By now you’ve probably figured that I ended up loving it. (Burying the lede is a thing I do). Well, it’s true. I loved it! This is a big and brilliant romp filled with indelible characters, one tremendous action set-piece, sharp comedic bits, and more than a few moments of exquisite poignancy.
(The title, taken from Norwegian folkore, is also explained, but I’ll leave that to you and your own book club to discover and parse).
The Nix begins in 2011, with the kind of ridiculous plot-inciter that worried me in the first place. A woman named Faye Anderson has “assaulted� the conservative governor of Wyoming, Sheldon Packer, who is planning a run for the presidency. Immediately dubbed the “Packer Attacker�, Faye finds herself in some serious legal trouble.
Faye’s notoriety draws her back into the life of her estranged son, an English professor named Samuel Andresen-Anderson, who she abandoned at a very young age. For reasons that are too convoluted to explain � and which I don’t want to spoil � Samuel embarks on a journey to unearth his mother’s past, and to determine why she left him.
Hill tells his story by utilizing several different timelines. The book’s “present� is in 2011, with Samuel searching for clues, and Faye biding her time with an attorney with hyperhidrosis. (Like I said, there are affectations aplenty). The second major timeline takes place in 1968. This reveals Faye’s journey from her small hometown to Chicago, where she arrives at college just in time for the Democratic National Convention. There are also flashbacks to Samuel’s motherless childhood, focusing on his relationship with the Fall twins, Bishop and Bethany.
Hill is a fantastic and accessible writer. His descriptions are mesmerizing, his grasp of detail impeccable. His characterizations are great, even though some of his characters come off a bit one-dimensional. Take, for instance, his portrayal of Pwnage, a gamer obsessed with World of Elfscape, an online swords-and-orcs game modeled after World of Warcraft. Pwnage is a man whose brain chemistry has been rewired, and Hill takes us through his mental processes in brutal and hilarious fashion. In one passage, Pwnage is meditating on his use of a smartphone app to eat healthier:
[T]he smartphone app analyzed the nutrients and metanutrients he consumed and compared them to FDA-recommended dosages of all the important vitamins, acids, fats, etc., and displayed the results in a graph that should have been a soothing green if he were doing it all correctly but was actually a panic-button red due to his alarming lack of really anything necessary for the maintenance of basic organ health. And yes he had to admit that lately his eyeballs and the ends of his hair had acquired a disconcerting yellowish hue, and his fingernails had become thinner and more brittle and had a tendency, when chewed, to suddenly split right down the middle almost all the way to the base, and recently his nails and hair had stopped growing completely and now seemed to recede in places or even curl back on themselves, and also he’d developed a more or less permanent rash on his arm at the place a wristwatch would go. So while he was typically far under his 2,000-calorie daily maximum he understood that the calories he needed to consume in order to “eat better� were totally different kinds of calories, namely the organic fresh whole-food kind that were prohibitively expensive given the monthly credit card payments he was making on his smartphone and its associated text and data plans. And he grasped the paradox of this, that it was somewhat of an ironic bind that paying for the device that showed him how to eat right prevented him from having the money to actually be able to eat right�
The Nix is filled with such passages, which do a remarkable job of mimicking the interior mechanics of each particular character.
I'm under no illusion that this will be universally beloved. The Nix is a flawed masterpiece. There are times when Hill’s talent is a bit too evident. He is, in other words, showing off. At one point he writes a sentence that goes on for a page or two. During the 1968 Democratic Convention sequence, Hill starts randomly popping into the minds of Walter Cronkite and Hubert Humphrey, seemingly for no other reason than to dazzle us with his cleverness. There are certain subplots (a cheating student in Samuel’s class) that don’t really pay off, at least not in terms of how much time is devoted to the setup. I also found some of his observations to be a bit trite. Online gaming, cable news, and the modern airport are pretty low-hanging fruit as targets for biting critiques. At one point, a character feels some vague despair at watching Americans line up for a meal at McDonalds. Seriously? Can we call a moratorium on fast food as a symbol of ennui and existential crisis? It’s not that bad! Especially not the breakfast!
When I think about how these things bothered me, I am instantly reminded of all the parts of The Nix that soared. For every broad flourish, there are ten or twenty perfectly realized scenes of grace, of heartbreak, of love and war, of betrayal, of false starts, of stunted dreams, of belated realizations. There is a scene between young-adult Samuel and Bethany (with whom Samuel is in love) in New York City that is constructed with such tenderness and fragility that it felt like I read it under a spell. Hill can be a bit obnoxious in displaying his gifts. He can also be a freaking word-magician.
This is a novels that reads downhill. The deeper you get into it, the more momentum it builds. The different timelines start to communicate with each other across time and space; things that had one meaning take on another; people we viewed one way, suddenly require a second look. When you finish, you’re a bit exhausted, but you’re left wanting to return, to know what these characters will do with the knowledge they have gained.
April 28, 2017
I listened to the audio version of The Nix. Right now I'm at 4 stars but if the novel sticks with me I might bump it up to 4 1/2. This is a great audiobook but not a perfect book. I know people are comparing this to The Goldfinch, and I get that, but I don't think the writing was as sophisticated as Tartt's book.
It took me two tries with this novel. I will say that if you are going to read or listen to it, make the time for no long stretch stops. That's what I did the first time and I couldn't get back into it.
Ari Fliakos is amazing narrating this. 5+++++ Star Audio! Strongly recommended for those who don't mind books that could use a bit of length tweaking.
Sorry this is a rough review but I've been in a book rut for about 5 months. Hopefully I can write better reviews again soon. :)
It took me two tries with this novel. I will say that if you are going to read or listen to it, make the time for no long stretch stops. That's what I did the first time and I couldn't get back into it.
Ari Fliakos is amazing narrating this. 5+++++ Star Audio! Strongly recommended for those who don't mind books that could use a bit of length tweaking.
Sorry this is a rough review but I've been in a book rut for about 5 months. Hopefully I can write better reviews again soon. :)
July 8, 2020
Professor of English Samuel Andreson-Anderson's mother abandoned him when he was 11 years old � it has become an event that will continue to mark all of his days.
It had never occurred to him before that he could not stop. Everyone stopped. But in the face of his mother’s goneness, all the world’s normal rules fell away. If she could leave, why couldn’t he? So he did. He walked away and was surprised how easy it was. He walked along the sidewalk, didn’t even attempt to run or hide. He walked in plain view and nobody stopped him. Nobody said a word. He floated away. It was a whole new reality.
But Professor Samuel Andreson-Anderson, Sam, really has nothing in his current life to run to, either. He should be working on his new book, but can’t recall the last time he really thought about it except in the way that one acknowledges those pesky thoughts that have a way of invading now and then. Reminders that he’s been paid an advance for a book he hasn’t written, hasn’t really worked on much lately. He goes to work at the University where he teaches twice a week, and that’s about all he does lately. That is, unless you count his online gaming life, Elfscape, where he goes to escape his real-life problems.
What kept people where they were, in their normal orbits? Nothing, he realized for the first time. There was nothing to stop anyone from, on any given day, vanishing.
It’s after one of these escapades when he finds out that his mother, after all these years, is now on the news. She’s the new “it� news, after she’s caught on video throwing rocks / stones / pebbles at a maybe-prospective Presidential candidate. And to add more emotionally draining news to that, the publisher that paid him that big advance? Now they want him to return it� or else, maybe, write a book about the woman the news is now calling “The Packer Attacker.� His mother. The woman he’s blocked from his thoughts for most of his life by now.
Time heals many things because it sets us on trajectories that make the past seem impossible.
A journey ensues, to visit her first, and then to try and reconstruct her life, his parent’s early lives, meeting people she knew in the brief time she lived in Chicago, the year she left their her home town, her parents� home town, for college. A period of time, a particularly epic historical period of time, that changed her, formed her into a young woman who would never again be the girl who left home to live in Chicago.
There are, ultimately, numerous detours in this journey, sometimes it may feel as though you’ve opened one too many doors in the Winchester Mystery House, an extravagant maze of a mansion known for its size, its curiosities and an apparent lack of a master building plan. However, The Nix most assuredly, does have a “master building plan� - it’s just not always apparent when you find yourself pondering where and when the exit will appear.
As a debut novel, especially, this is astoundingly good, entertaining, appealing to several generations and spanning multiple genres: fairy-tales / folk tales, choose-your-own-adventures, family-relationships, politics, government, corruption, war, humour, historical fiction, gaming, social media, sexual abuse, the “sexual revolution,� police brutality and, ultimately, the impact that the years of our youth, friends, missing parents, have in forming the adults we, hopefully, eventually, become.
Recommended
It had never occurred to him before that he could not stop. Everyone stopped. But in the face of his mother’s goneness, all the world’s normal rules fell away. If she could leave, why couldn’t he? So he did. He walked away and was surprised how easy it was. He walked along the sidewalk, didn’t even attempt to run or hide. He walked in plain view and nobody stopped him. Nobody said a word. He floated away. It was a whole new reality.
But Professor Samuel Andreson-Anderson, Sam, really has nothing in his current life to run to, either. He should be working on his new book, but can’t recall the last time he really thought about it except in the way that one acknowledges those pesky thoughts that have a way of invading now and then. Reminders that he’s been paid an advance for a book he hasn’t written, hasn’t really worked on much lately. He goes to work at the University where he teaches twice a week, and that’s about all he does lately. That is, unless you count his online gaming life, Elfscape, where he goes to escape his real-life problems.
What kept people where they were, in their normal orbits? Nothing, he realized for the first time. There was nothing to stop anyone from, on any given day, vanishing.
It’s after one of these escapades when he finds out that his mother, after all these years, is now on the news. She’s the new “it� news, after she’s caught on video throwing rocks / stones / pebbles at a maybe-prospective Presidential candidate. And to add more emotionally draining news to that, the publisher that paid him that big advance? Now they want him to return it� or else, maybe, write a book about the woman the news is now calling “The Packer Attacker.� His mother. The woman he’s blocked from his thoughts for most of his life by now.
Time heals many things because it sets us on trajectories that make the past seem impossible.
A journey ensues, to visit her first, and then to try and reconstruct her life, his parent’s early lives, meeting people she knew in the brief time she lived in Chicago, the year she left their her home town, her parents� home town, for college. A period of time, a particularly epic historical period of time, that changed her, formed her into a young woman who would never again be the girl who left home to live in Chicago.
There are, ultimately, numerous detours in this journey, sometimes it may feel as though you’ve opened one too many doors in the Winchester Mystery House, an extravagant maze of a mansion known for its size, its curiosities and an apparent lack of a master building plan. However, The Nix most assuredly, does have a “master building plan� - it’s just not always apparent when you find yourself pondering where and when the exit will appear.
As a debut novel, especially, this is astoundingly good, entertaining, appealing to several generations and spanning multiple genres: fairy-tales / folk tales, choose-your-own-adventures, family-relationships, politics, government, corruption, war, humour, historical fiction, gaming, social media, sexual abuse, the “sexual revolution,� police brutality and, ultimately, the impact that the years of our youth, friends, missing parents, have in forming the adults we, hopefully, eventually, become.
Recommended
September 21, 2018
Wow. It has been a long time since a novel has blown my mind. The writing in this book is astonishingly, staggeringly good. Plus, I chuckled out loud throughout the story. It's funny and a little sad, both. Part of the sad part was being reminded of how women and protesters were treated in 60s, not that everything has changed by any stretch of the imagination.
Samuel deals with cheating, apathetic students at the university where he teaches intro to lit to pay the mortgage, but to escape reality, he spends hours and hours in an online gaming universe. This is why he didn’t watch the news and know right way that his mother, who abandoned him and his father when Samuel was eleven years old, is the Packer Attacker, the woman who threw pebbles at the pro-second amendment, anti-first amendment possible presidential candidate walking through the park with his entourage—and many journalists with cameras rolling.
When Samuel’s publisher tells him he has to fulfill the book contract he made years earlier or payback his advance (long since spent), Samuel pitches the idea that he write about his mother, the Packer Attacker, the woman who attacked Wyoming Governor Sheldon Packer. His publisher pounces on the idea. What this means for Samuel, however, is excavating a painful past between his mother and himself, his best friend from childhood, and the girl he fell in love with many years ago.
The story weaves between Faye’s childhood and Samuel’s to find the truth about Faye’s history and the secrets she never revealed to anyone.
I’m just going to repeat that the writing is beautiful and the story intricate. This is not a short novel, but it’s worth every page. Highly recommend.
For more reviews, please visit:
Samuel deals with cheating, apathetic students at the university where he teaches intro to lit to pay the mortgage, but to escape reality, he spends hours and hours in an online gaming universe. This is why he didn’t watch the news and know right way that his mother, who abandoned him and his father when Samuel was eleven years old, is the Packer Attacker, the woman who threw pebbles at the pro-second amendment, anti-first amendment possible presidential candidate walking through the park with his entourage—and many journalists with cameras rolling.
When Samuel’s publisher tells him he has to fulfill the book contract he made years earlier or payback his advance (long since spent), Samuel pitches the idea that he write about his mother, the Packer Attacker, the woman who attacked Wyoming Governor Sheldon Packer. His publisher pounces on the idea. What this means for Samuel, however, is excavating a painful past between his mother and himself, his best friend from childhood, and the girl he fell in love with many years ago.
The story weaves between Faye’s childhood and Samuel’s to find the truth about Faye’s history and the secrets she never revealed to anyone.
I’m just going to repeat that the writing is beautiful and the story intricate. This is not a short novel, but it’s worth every page. Highly recommend.
For more reviews, please visit:
October 21, 2016
is made up of many good parts, some very funny even, but most of them never come together. There were whole chapters of this doorstopper that felt like unnecessary padding.
The central story - about a bored college teacher who is commissioned to write a book about the mother he hasn't seen for years - is diluted by hundreds of tangents that wander off in all directions, spending far too much time on inconsequential anecdotes and subplots from Samuel's childhood, as well as side stories about minor characters. Plus, I don't want to be the kind of asshole who says every book over 500 pages is too long but, truly, this is too long. A third could have (and should have) been cut with little effect to the story.
I've started with the negative, but I did enjoy this book. It was much funnier than I expected and there were some really fantastic scenes where Hill's writing just sparkled with charisma. Several people have noted the early exchange between Samuel and one of his female students, in which she attempts to get away with plagiarism by using almost every logical fallacy you can name. It was hilarious perfection.
Moments of brilliance are scattered throughout but, overall, the book just needed another round of editing to sharpen the focus. Detail can be a great thing, but often excessive detail reads like filler. That was the case here. The great writing didn't disguise the pointlessness of certain sections and it was very tempting to skim read them (as I found out later, that would have probably had no effect on my reading experience).
Not bad for a debut, though. I'd happily check out Hill's future work.
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The central story - about a bored college teacher who is commissioned to write a book about the mother he hasn't seen for years - is diluted by hundreds of tangents that wander off in all directions, spending far too much time on inconsequential anecdotes and subplots from Samuel's childhood, as well as side stories about minor characters. Plus, I don't want to be the kind of asshole who says every book over 500 pages is too long but, truly, this is too long. A third could have (and should have) been cut with little effect to the story.
I've started with the negative, but I did enjoy this book. It was much funnier than I expected and there were some really fantastic scenes where Hill's writing just sparkled with charisma. Several people have noted the early exchange between Samuel and one of his female students, in which she attempts to get away with plagiarism by using almost every logical fallacy you can name. It was hilarious perfection.
Moments of brilliance are scattered throughout but, overall, the book just needed another round of editing to sharpen the focus. Detail can be a great thing, but often excessive detail reads like filler. That was the case here. The great writing didn't disguise the pointlessness of certain sections and it was very tempting to skim read them (as I found out later, that would have probably had no effect on my reading experience).
Not bad for a debut, though. I'd happily check out Hill's future work.
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March 30, 2017
I went into The Nix with absolutely no preconceptions. It was recommended to me by my friend Ameriie, with whom I share a pretty similar reading taste. So I got my hands on a copy, and the rest is history.
What Nathan Hill is able to accomplish in this novel—please note that this is his debut novel!—is something many strive for and fall short of. It's a sweeping story of family, love (romantic and platonic), betrayal, debts, and abandonment. It covers decades and a multitude of characters and flips back and forth between them all. And yet it never feels convoluted or messy or hard to follow. Our main character, Samuel Andresen-Anderson, is the thread that ties it all together as he searches for answers about his mother's past while dealing with his own issues from childhood and concurrent difficulties he faces as an adult. It's ambitious. And I loved it.
The best I can compare it to is , which is a book that holds a special place in my heart for a variety of reasons. But something I can't express is the feelings these two books gave me while reading them and left me with after the last pages were turned. They both have this special quality to them—in the writing, characters, themes, and execution—that, in my eyes, puts them above other literary fiction novels I normally read. It's an inexplicable something that nestles in your brain and makes its way down to your heart, and by the end you are totally invested and never want the story to end.
I also loved the image of the nix and how that came back throughout the story. Such a clever device that holds so much meaning and propels the story forward. Hill is a master!
Before this devolves into a ramble about how much I love this book, I'll end the review by saying that it's best going into this book with little knowledge of the subject matter. Take a risk and pick it up if you are into books with a lot of heart, history, and hope—and books that you will need to talk with people about once you finish them!
What Nathan Hill is able to accomplish in this novel—please note that this is his debut novel!—is something many strive for and fall short of. It's a sweeping story of family, love (romantic and platonic), betrayal, debts, and abandonment. It covers decades and a multitude of characters and flips back and forth between them all. And yet it never feels convoluted or messy or hard to follow. Our main character, Samuel Andresen-Anderson, is the thread that ties it all together as he searches for answers about his mother's past while dealing with his own issues from childhood and concurrent difficulties he faces as an adult. It's ambitious. And I loved it.
The best I can compare it to is , which is a book that holds a special place in my heart for a variety of reasons. But something I can't express is the feelings these two books gave me while reading them and left me with after the last pages were turned. They both have this special quality to them—in the writing, characters, themes, and execution—that, in my eyes, puts them above other literary fiction novels I normally read. It's an inexplicable something that nestles in your brain and makes its way down to your heart, and by the end you are totally invested and never want the story to end.
I also loved the image of the nix and how that came back throughout the story. Such a clever device that holds so much meaning and propels the story forward. Hill is a master!
Before this devolves into a ramble about how much I love this book, I'll end the review by saying that it's best going into this book with little knowledge of the subject matter. Take a risk and pick it up if you are into books with a lot of heart, history, and hope—and books that you will need to talk with people about once you finish them!
April 23, 2017
"Sometimes we're so wrapped up in our own story that we don't see how we're supporting characters in someone else's."
4 Stars for storytelling
3 Stars for plot
Rounding to 4 because I enjoyed the experience.
The story and the writing in this book were very entertaining. I was enthralled the entire way through. The style changed from time to time which was interesting and showed the skill of the author.
I heard some commentary about this book saying that it is a bit dark and cynical which can make it a tough read if you are looking for something light and uplifting. I can say that I do agree with this assessment.
Plot-wise there was just soooooo much which made it feel like there were lots of loose ends, unfinished business, and thinly fleshed out storylines. Imagine having 4 hours to do 10 chores. If you spend the whole time doing one, at least you will get it done really well. With this book, it was like the author shoved all 10 chores into the 4 hours, so they were either only partially done or done sloppily.
It seems like it would be hard to say that a book is both well written but lacks a strong, concise, and complete plot . . . but, here it is! I'm saying it!
"If you're not afraid of it, then it's not real change."
4 Stars for storytelling
3 Stars for plot
Rounding to 4 because I enjoyed the experience.
The story and the writing in this book were very entertaining. I was enthralled the entire way through. The style changed from time to time which was interesting and showed the skill of the author.
I heard some commentary about this book saying that it is a bit dark and cynical which can make it a tough read if you are looking for something light and uplifting. I can say that I do agree with this assessment.
Plot-wise there was just soooooo much which made it feel like there were lots of loose ends, unfinished business, and thinly fleshed out storylines. Imagine having 4 hours to do 10 chores. If you spend the whole time doing one, at least you will get it done really well. With this book, it was like the author shoved all 10 chores into the 4 hours, so they were either only partially done or done sloppily.
It seems like it would be hard to say that a book is both well written but lacks a strong, concise, and complete plot . . . but, here it is! I'm saying it!
"If you're not afraid of it, then it's not real change."
February 22, 2017
I don't know if everyone will find this book as funny as I did. But to me, scenes were laugh out loud funny. When Laura gives all her excuses she shouldn't be failed for turning in a 99% plagiarized paper, I was beside myself. Professor Sam Anderson is a grammar nerd, so I immediately bonded with him, other than all the crying. Stuck teaching English literature to kids that don't care at a second rate college, he finds enjoyment playing online Elfin war games.
The story veers between 2011 when Sam agrees to write a book concerning his mother, who has achieved celebrity status for throwing stones at an ultra conservative presidential candidate, and the stories of both her and his youth.
Great writing, great characters. I'm not sure who was my favorite, Laura or Guy. In one sense, both are peripheral characters, but in another, Hill saves some of his most biting sarcasm for these two.
The novel is divided into ten sections. The story bogs down occasionally, which is the reason this is four, not five stars for me. In particular, I struggled with the sections written about Pwnage, Sam’s online gaming friend.
This is a fast read for a book coming in at 628 pages. It is by turns funny, moving, philosophical and biting. It definitely doesn’t come across as a debut novel. It’ll be interesting to see where Nathan Hill goes from here.
The story veers between 2011 when Sam agrees to write a book concerning his mother, who has achieved celebrity status for throwing stones at an ultra conservative presidential candidate, and the stories of both her and his youth.
Great writing, great characters. I'm not sure who was my favorite, Laura or Guy. In one sense, both are peripheral characters, but in another, Hill saves some of his most biting sarcasm for these two.
The novel is divided into ten sections. The story bogs down occasionally, which is the reason this is four, not five stars for me. In particular, I struggled with the sections written about Pwnage, Sam’s online gaming friend.
This is a fast read for a book coming in at 628 pages. It is by turns funny, moving, philosophical and biting. It definitely doesn’t come across as a debut novel. It’ll be interesting to see where Nathan Hill goes from here.
December 23, 2022
My introduction to the fiction of Nathan Hill is his debut novel The Nix, a Great American Novel that at 620 pages, is a boat anchor. I came up for air and dropped it at 320 pages. Published in 2016, this literary epic is about a lot, mostly a reconciliation between a failed novelist named Samuel Andersen-Anderson and his mother Faye, who walked out on him and his father thirty years ago. Faye resurfaces during her fifteen minutes of fame chucking pebbles at a hardline governor running for president, which Samuel's publisher feels puts him in the unique position to crank out a tell-all memoir, if he can reconcile with his mother.
Oh, but this book is about so much more! Hill shares his opinion on the pitiful state of pop music, the ridiculous state of online gaming (a la World of Warcraft), the sad state of higher learning, the idiotic state of the 24 hour news cycle, the disgraceful state of publishing, etc. This all became very droll for me, not because I disagreed with Hill or didn't think he could write, but because I didn't want to read it. Elmore Leonard advised writers to cut out the parts of a novel that readers tend to skip. Leonard didn't mention anything specific about block paragraphs--that's more of a deal breaker for me.
Samuel always feels this way around his publisher: a little uneasy in comparison, a little derelict. Periwinkle looks about forty years old but he's actually the same age as Samuel's father: in his mid-sixties. He seems to be fighting time by being cooler than it. He carries himself in an erect and stiff and regal manner--it's like he thinks of himself as an expensive and tightly wrapped birthday present. His thin shoes are severe and Italian-looking and have little ski jumps at the tips. His waistline seems about eight inches smaller than that of any other adult male in the airport. The knot in his necktie is as tight and hard as an acorn. His lightly graying hair is shaved to what seems to be a perfect and uniform one-centimeter length. Samuel always feels, standing next to him, baggy and big. Clothes bought off the rack and ill-fitting, probably a size too large. Whereas Periwinkle's tight-fitting suit sculpts his body into clean angles and straight lines, Samuel's shape seems blobbier.
If you found that paragraph to be literary TNT, please don't let me dissuade you from reading The Nix. My eyes glazed over everything after the third sentence, which doesn't do what I want a good novel to do: tell me a compelling story. Hill expresses a lot of opinions but doesn't tell a story that I needed to read. A son doesn't need 620 pages to discover why his mother left him. He doesn't need 20 pages. Those who savor literary fiction might delight in the Writing here, but this book just wasn't for me. Point of view shifts from Samuel to an online gaming buddy to Faye put the novel in the "telling" mode rather than a "showing" mode. At this length, that's a lot of telling.
Length: 188,356 words
Oh, but this book is about so much more! Hill shares his opinion on the pitiful state of pop music, the ridiculous state of online gaming (a la World of Warcraft), the sad state of higher learning, the idiotic state of the 24 hour news cycle, the disgraceful state of publishing, etc. This all became very droll for me, not because I disagreed with Hill or didn't think he could write, but because I didn't want to read it. Elmore Leonard advised writers to cut out the parts of a novel that readers tend to skip. Leonard didn't mention anything specific about block paragraphs--that's more of a deal breaker for me.
Samuel always feels this way around his publisher: a little uneasy in comparison, a little derelict. Periwinkle looks about forty years old but he's actually the same age as Samuel's father: in his mid-sixties. He seems to be fighting time by being cooler than it. He carries himself in an erect and stiff and regal manner--it's like he thinks of himself as an expensive and tightly wrapped birthday present. His thin shoes are severe and Italian-looking and have little ski jumps at the tips. His waistline seems about eight inches smaller than that of any other adult male in the airport. The knot in his necktie is as tight and hard as an acorn. His lightly graying hair is shaved to what seems to be a perfect and uniform one-centimeter length. Samuel always feels, standing next to him, baggy and big. Clothes bought off the rack and ill-fitting, probably a size too large. Whereas Periwinkle's tight-fitting suit sculpts his body into clean angles and straight lines, Samuel's shape seems blobbier.
If you found that paragraph to be literary TNT, please don't let me dissuade you from reading The Nix. My eyes glazed over everything after the third sentence, which doesn't do what I want a good novel to do: tell me a compelling story. Hill expresses a lot of opinions but doesn't tell a story that I needed to read. A son doesn't need 620 pages to discover why his mother left him. He doesn't need 20 pages. Those who savor literary fiction might delight in the Writing here, but this book just wasn't for me. Point of view shifts from Samuel to an online gaming buddy to Faye put the novel in the "telling" mode rather than a "showing" mode. At this length, that's a lot of telling.
Length: 188,356 words
May 18, 2017
Nathan Hill’s whirling debut novel, “The Nix,� blasts off with an assault on Gov. Sheldon Packer, a fire-breathing, anti-immigrant presidential candidate who may remind you of a certain reality-TV star with size anxiety. A video clip shot by some modern-day Zapruder shows a middle-aged woman shouting, “You pig!� and throwing something at Packer, who, by the grace of God, survives. (The “weapon� was just a handful of gravel, but still!) In the breathless coverage that consumes the nation, the would-be assassin � “The Packer Attacker� � is quickly identified as a teaching assistant at an elementary school, which, the governor’s allies note, “shows how the radical liberal agenda has taken over public education.�
That splashy blend of violence and farce, hewing close to the shore of today’s tweet stream, is the first sign that we’re in the presence of a major new comic novelist. Hill, 40, spent a couple of. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
See the Totally Hip Video Book Revew here:
To watch my interview with Nathan Hill at The Washington Post, click here:
That splashy blend of violence and farce, hewing close to the shore of today’s tweet stream, is the first sign that we’re in the presence of a major new comic novelist. Hill, 40, spent a couple of. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
See the Totally Hip Video Book Revew here:
To watch my interview with Nathan Hill at The Washington Post, click here:
December 5, 2019
I love books like The Nix!
Big contemporary novels (often American) bursting with incident, incisively drawn characters, myriad relationships, contentious politics and a mysterious, slowly revealed story that brings it all together.
The Nix is very funny, very moving, snappy and fizzing with ideas.
Much of this novel is set in the present but with large sections set in the 80s and earlier, particularly 1968 a year in America typified by free love, hippies, student demonstrations and Vietnam.
American politics is explored humorously and savagely, especially the yawning chasm between left and right, conservative and liberal. Parallels between the 60‘s and now are obvious.
So much of contemporary American society is dissected in The Nix that it would be a tediously long review to mention it all - although the stuff on social media, video games, student culture, the politically correct, the ugly traditionalist, lawyers, vacuous pop singers etc etc etc is brilliantly realised.
Just read it :)
Big contemporary novels (often American) bursting with incident, incisively drawn characters, myriad relationships, contentious politics and a mysterious, slowly revealed story that brings it all together.
The Nix is very funny, very moving, snappy and fizzing with ideas.
Much of this novel is set in the present but with large sections set in the 80s and earlier, particularly 1968 a year in America typified by free love, hippies, student demonstrations and Vietnam.
American politics is explored humorously and savagely, especially the yawning chasm between left and right, conservative and liberal. Parallels between the 60‘s and now are obvious.
So much of contemporary American society is dissected in The Nix that it would be a tediously long review to mention it all - although the stuff on social media, video games, student culture, the politically correct, the ugly traditionalist, lawyers, vacuous pop singers etc etc etc is brilliantly realised.
Just read it :)
December 6, 2016
This is a Big Bold Debut Novel that I thought was OK, but I didn't love it. At one point I was so frustrated with this book that I abandoned it.* Later I trudged back and decided to finish.
The story is 600+ pages worth of complications. Samuel is a struggling writer and college professor. He is estranged from his mother, Faye, who gets caught in a media storm when she's videotaped throwing rocks at a political event. Samuel is offered a chance to salvage his book contract by writing a story about his mother, which pushes him to contact her for the first time in years. This plot device allows us to flash back to 1968, when Faye was involved in the countercultural movement and the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. We also learn the story of Faye's family, and see the forces that shaped her life.
To sum up: this book is about a troubled mother-son relationship, mixed with political and social commentary. There were some passages and themes I liked, so I think a 3-star rating is fair. If you like Big Bold Debut Novels, you may like this.
*Sidenote: My big complaint about this book is the negative portrayals of female characters. My first sign of a problem was the author's introduction of a young college student who was caught plagiarizing and then lied about cheating. The scenes with this young woman became so ridiculously hateful that I dreaded reading this book. The early descriptions of Faye were also negative, and when we jump back to Faye's youth, we meet more difficult women. I'm putting this comment in a sidenote because I was reading this book during a heated presidential election, when sexist comments and stories were daily in the news and circulating on social media. I am sensitive to sexist stories, and this novel was only adding to my outrage. So if you can overlook the sexism, you will probably enjoy this novel more than I did.
The story is 600+ pages worth of complications. Samuel is a struggling writer and college professor. He is estranged from his mother, Faye, who gets caught in a media storm when she's videotaped throwing rocks at a political event. Samuel is offered a chance to salvage his book contract by writing a story about his mother, which pushes him to contact her for the first time in years. This plot device allows us to flash back to 1968, when Faye was involved in the countercultural movement and the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. We also learn the story of Faye's family, and see the forces that shaped her life.
To sum up: this book is about a troubled mother-son relationship, mixed with political and social commentary. There were some passages and themes I liked, so I think a 3-star rating is fair. If you like Big Bold Debut Novels, you may like this.
*Sidenote: My big complaint about this book is the negative portrayals of female characters. My first sign of a problem was the author's introduction of a young college student who was caught plagiarizing and then lied about cheating. The scenes with this young woman became so ridiculously hateful that I dreaded reading this book. The early descriptions of Faye were also negative, and when we jump back to Faye's youth, we meet more difficult women. I'm putting this comment in a sidenote because I was reading this book during a heated presidential election, when sexist comments and stories were daily in the news and circulating on social media. I am sensitive to sexist stories, and this novel was only adding to my outrage. So if you can overlook the sexism, you will probably enjoy this novel more than I did.
September 9, 2016
This is the story of two lives. A son and his mother. The thing is they hardly know one another. Samuel hasn’t seen his mother for over 20 years, when she walked out the door one day in 1988, before his eleventh birthday. Despite that they are very much the same person. Shaped by circumstance and choice. Damaged by a similar childhood experience and tied by genes which exhibit a very similar vulnerability.
Strangely enough, it is the throwing of rocks at a governor, soon-to-be presidential candidate, that will bring son and mom together once again. Those rocks are thrown by mom, Faye, and for a reason that will not be readily revealed. I got the feeling that the mid-thirties Samuel had been lost for quite some time. He’s now a literature professor, yet in undistinguished, small college in Chicago. He spends his free time playing online video games, and clinging to the thoughts of the girl he lost a long time ago, but underneath these things I glimpsed a character with strength. Where did that come from?
Faye Andersen-Anderson. My impression of her early in the book: I really don’t like this woman. This radical still clinging to the sixties movement; uncaring wife; mother who loved her child, but who cannot bear the emotional weight and so she runs. This early impression was followed by the but that I did not expect: I didn’t really know her yet. I hadn’t seen the fuller picture. The childhood that shaped her; the hopes and dreams she once had; the things that occur in life which dash those dreams; and a love lost, or at least the chance of one. I saw all this and more after another of the author’s beautifully handled segues between the years. This segue to 1968, like the others to follow, transformed the picture I thought I knew into a whole other picture. The Faye of 1968 is not the Faye of 2011. Wait, because that’s not true either. At the opening of the book there’s a story told of some blind men who were each shown a piece of an elephant. The trunk, an ear, the tusk, etc. Then each blind man described an elephant by what he’d felt. This is an elephant. But each description was different, and so they argued. Later in the book there’s this description the young Faye of 1968 contrasted by the many mistakes and actions that combine to make the Faye of 2011, and she may look for the “true� self:
I thought that was beautiful, and so adept to Faye’s life. I’ll take it a step further and say it describes Samuel as well.
Here’s my highest praise: I did not want this book to end. It was filled with unexpected humor, these funny, laugh-out-loud moments that served so well to balance the serious and the emotional. I loved the characters, and reasoning behind what made them tick. And again, the author does a wonderful job by transitioning the story between the years. I was never bored.
I will not go so far to say that this is the perfect book, but when I stop and think about that, I know there is no such thing. If I were to nit-pick, here are two small things I did not love:
- Nathan Hill’s writing style is exceptional. I love the long sentence structure, but sometimes it was too much. One chapter literally included a single (yet be it a well structured one) sentence that continued for ten pages. Full truth: I loved the first 4 pages, or so, of that.
- The end of the book felt rushed. For the most part, I’m okay with the conclusion of the story, but it did not match the fervor of the first 550 pages. And one character turns out to be a real assbag. Well, isn’t that just like life?
Still, I’m staying with 5 stars because overall, it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year. In part, it reminded me of books like I Know This Much Is True and The Goldfinch (not the same story by any means, but emotionally similar). I can’t say everyone will like it, but I think many could potentially love it.
Strangely enough, it is the throwing of rocks at a governor, soon-to-be presidential candidate, that will bring son and mom together once again. Those rocks are thrown by mom, Faye, and for a reason that will not be readily revealed. I got the feeling that the mid-thirties Samuel had been lost for quite some time. He’s now a literature professor, yet in undistinguished, small college in Chicago. He spends his free time playing online video games, and clinging to the thoughts of the girl he lost a long time ago, but underneath these things I glimpsed a character with strength. Where did that come from?
Faye Andersen-Anderson. My impression of her early in the book: I really don’t like this woman. This radical still clinging to the sixties movement; uncaring wife; mother who loved her child, but who cannot bear the emotional weight and so she runs. This early impression was followed by the but that I did not expect: I didn’t really know her yet. I hadn’t seen the fuller picture. The childhood that shaped her; the hopes and dreams she once had; the things that occur in life which dash those dreams; and a love lost, or at least the chance of one. I saw all this and more after another of the author’s beautifully handled segues between the years. This segue to 1968, like the others to follow, transformed the picture I thought I knew into a whole other picture. The Faye of 1968 is not the Faye of 2011. Wait, because that’s not true either. At the opening of the book there’s a story told of some blind men who were each shown a piece of an elephant. The trunk, an ear, the tusk, etc. Then each blind man described an elephant by what he’d felt. This is an elephant. But each description was different, and so they argued. Later in the book there’s this description the young Faye of 1968 contrasted by the many mistakes and actions that combine to make the Faye of 2011, and she may look for the “true� self:
”In the story of the blind men and the elephant, what’s usually ignored is the fact that each man’s description was correct. What Faye won’t understand and may never understand is that there is not one true self hidden by many false ones. Rather, there is one true self hidden by many other true ones. Yes, she is the meek and shy and industrious student. Yes, she is the panicky and frightened child. Yes, she is the bold and impulsive seductress. Yes, she is the wife, and mother. And many other things as well. Her belief that only one of these is true obscures the larger truth, which was ultimately the problem with the blind men and the elephant. It wasn’t that they were blind � it’s that they stopped too quickly, and so never knew there was a larger truth to grasp�
I thought that was beautiful, and so adept to Faye’s life. I’ll take it a step further and say it describes Samuel as well.
Here’s my highest praise: I did not want this book to end. It was filled with unexpected humor, these funny, laugh-out-loud moments that served so well to balance the serious and the emotional. I loved the characters, and reasoning behind what made them tick. And again, the author does a wonderful job by transitioning the story between the years. I was never bored.
I will not go so far to say that this is the perfect book, but when I stop and think about that, I know there is no such thing. If I were to nit-pick, here are two small things I did not love:
- Nathan Hill’s writing style is exceptional. I love the long sentence structure, but sometimes it was too much. One chapter literally included a single (yet be it a well structured one) sentence that continued for ten pages. Full truth: I loved the first 4 pages, or so, of that.
- The end of the book felt rushed. For the most part, I’m okay with the conclusion of the story, but it did not match the fervor of the first 550 pages. And one character turns out to be a real assbag. Well, isn’t that just like life?
Still, I’m staying with 5 stars because overall, it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year. In part, it reminded me of books like I Know This Much Is True and The Goldfinch (not the same story by any means, but emotionally similar). I can’t say everyone will like it, but I think many could potentially love it.
May 4, 2017
I feel as though I just read three completely separate novels somewhat awkwardly combined into one 600+ page tome:
* The Faye Novel featuring Henry, Frank, Sebastian, Alice and Charles Brown (the most problematic with broadly drawn, cartoony characters and unlikely plot resolutions)
* The Samuel/Bishop/Bethany Novel (my favorite)
* The Social Commentary Novel, featuring Pwnage, Alan Ginsburg, Walter Cronkite, Guy Periwinkle, Governor Sheldon Packer, Laura Pottsdam et al (the most fun)
All of the stories are beautifully written and interesting in their own right but to me, they did not mesh successfully into one. The individual parts and pieces are way better than the whole. And can I just say that the satire in this book is brilliant? Hill skewers everything and everyone in a way that is very, very funny, insightful and mostly not mean spirited. I laughed out loud a LOT - especially in the segments featuring millenial twit Laura Pottsdam. Spot on.
This is a VERY ambitious first novel. It was very reminiscent of "The Goldfinch" in the beginning with Samuel, his lost mother Faye and his "bad boy" friend Bishop, but about half way through the book it went off the rails and into the weeds. I hung on but the book never regained its original 5-star magic. I think there was just too much going on, in addition to a number of odd plot devices and stunts that were distracting (like the "Choose Your Own Adventure" chapters and "The Nix" character, a Norwegian house spirit that borrows more than a little bit from Kreacher, the house elf in "Harry Potter").
I still really liked it. I just wish Hill's editor had said, "You know what, sport? I think you have 3 very good books here! Here's a big fat contract - let's start with ONE book. I'll let you choose your own adventure!"
* The Faye Novel featuring Henry, Frank, Sebastian, Alice and Charles Brown (the most problematic with broadly drawn, cartoony characters and unlikely plot resolutions)
* The Samuel/Bishop/Bethany Novel (my favorite)
* The Social Commentary Novel, featuring Pwnage, Alan Ginsburg, Walter Cronkite, Guy Periwinkle, Governor Sheldon Packer, Laura Pottsdam et al (the most fun)
All of the stories are beautifully written and interesting in their own right but to me, they did not mesh successfully into one. The individual parts and pieces are way better than the whole. And can I just say that the satire in this book is brilliant? Hill skewers everything and everyone in a way that is very, very funny, insightful and mostly not mean spirited. I laughed out loud a LOT - especially in the segments featuring millenial twit Laura Pottsdam. Spot on.
This is a VERY ambitious first novel. It was very reminiscent of "The Goldfinch" in the beginning with Samuel, his lost mother Faye and his "bad boy" friend Bishop, but about half way through the book it went off the rails and into the weeds. I hung on but the book never regained its original 5-star magic. I think there was just too much going on, in addition to a number of odd plot devices and stunts that were distracting (like the "Choose Your Own Adventure" chapters and "The Nix" character, a Norwegian house spirit that borrows more than a little bit from Kreacher, the house elf in "Harry Potter").
I still really liked it. I just wish Hill's editor had said, "You know what, sport? I think you have 3 very good books here! Here's a big fat contract - let's start with ONE book. I'll let you choose your own adventure!"
June 20, 2016
Hey everybody, can you feel it? Can you tell by the advance copies, the promised marketing campaign(s), the effusive praise from the publisher? It's THE NEXT BIG THING!!! (I know it is, it says so on the cover.)
But let's dispense with the pleasantries first.
Mr. Hill's prose is straightforward, direct; thankfully, he isn't writing for other writers. His characters are distinct individuals whose motivations are (mostly) understandable. He skewers college & academia most delightfully (one sequence early on dazzles). There is heart in the book, and it seems to be in the right place� or, places.
Before I detail for you just exactly why this book is yet another in a line of emperors sans clothes, let me apologize for my preponderance of long, negative reviews. It's like this: good books need only a thumbs-up, an oblique description that preserves a new reader's experience.
But bad books, and especially bad books that have only their own promotion to recommend them? They need to be nipped in the bud. You may disagree, of course, but at least you'll have to explain yourself beyond I Was Excited to Read It Before Everybody Else.
OK then.
Some books want to tell us How Things Are Now, to make their canvas the whole of the world we live in and capture the moment we're all presently sharing. I've come to call these zeitgeist novels.
The zeitgeist novel aims at a story either so universal or so sprawling that it can't help but trap the reader in its net. But this presents a tricky problem for the writer. If he's too specific or peculiar, he may lose the reader's identification; if he generalizes and his observations are readily apparent, he loses the reader's interest.
The Nix falls under the latter rubric. The voice is pretty much all Captain Obvious, the book's conclusions amounting to revelations such as
- playing video games for most of your waking hours is bad for you
- leaving your family is wrong and will affect them negatively
- college students can be manipulative and dishonest.
There is very little in this book that could not have been written by any writer. Certainly it took time and dedication to produce, but neither while reading it nor afterward did I have any better sense of who Mr. Hill is as a person or how he, specifically, sees the world. Not enough distinguishes The Nix to recommend it.
In the latter pages, especially, Mr. Hill is given to stabs at aphorisms and the kind of the suppositions that pass for wisdom only in tone, not substance. Like, "Time heals many things because it sets us on trajectories that make the past impossible." It does? I've read that sentence a dozen times and I still can't make sense of it.
Or, after a description of airport terminal commerce, a one-sentence paragraph: "This is who we are." Is it? It does tell me somewhat who YOU are- reductive, and mired in sophomoric analysis. This kind of 'insight' merely flatters the reader; no one who reads a book like The Nix finds their soul nourished by the shopping opportunities between Gates 30 and 40. Again, obvious.
Worst: "who if he could have heard what was going through Bishop's head at that moment... would never have exploded that bomb." Wouldn't it be nice to think so, the untapped empathy even of the guerrilla terrorist, who needs only see into the soul of the other to stop him from killing? Here Mr. Hill reveals a fundamentally shallow view of the world, which in this instance (and others) borders on outright naïveté.
And then by the end we're again tying up all the loose ends, converging the characters, and arranging for the climax to take place at an historically significant event; we're in the head of Hubert Humphrey and Allen Ginsberg and Walter Cronkite and whatever on earth for? Because intertwining one's narrative with an Important Historic Event lends heft and significance� and is a hallmark of a bad book.
But narratives like these seem to be catnip to publishers, who love to take the credit for discovering The Next Big Thing. Congratulations, Mr. Hill, on being all the richer for it.
But let's dispense with the pleasantries first.
Mr. Hill's prose is straightforward, direct; thankfully, he isn't writing for other writers. His characters are distinct individuals whose motivations are (mostly) understandable. He skewers college & academia most delightfully (one sequence early on dazzles). There is heart in the book, and it seems to be in the right place� or, places.
Before I detail for you just exactly why this book is yet another in a line of emperors sans clothes, let me apologize for my preponderance of long, negative reviews. It's like this: good books need only a thumbs-up, an oblique description that preserves a new reader's experience.
But bad books, and especially bad books that have only their own promotion to recommend them? They need to be nipped in the bud. You may disagree, of course, but at least you'll have to explain yourself beyond I Was Excited to Read It Before Everybody Else.
OK then.
Some books want to tell us How Things Are Now, to make their canvas the whole of the world we live in and capture the moment we're all presently sharing. I've come to call these zeitgeist novels.
The zeitgeist novel aims at a story either so universal or so sprawling that it can't help but trap the reader in its net. But this presents a tricky problem for the writer. If he's too specific or peculiar, he may lose the reader's identification; if he generalizes and his observations are readily apparent, he loses the reader's interest.
The Nix falls under the latter rubric. The voice is pretty much all Captain Obvious, the book's conclusions amounting to revelations such as
- playing video games for most of your waking hours is bad for you
- leaving your family is wrong and will affect them negatively
- college students can be manipulative and dishonest.
There is very little in this book that could not have been written by any writer. Certainly it took time and dedication to produce, but neither while reading it nor afterward did I have any better sense of who Mr. Hill is as a person or how he, specifically, sees the world. Not enough distinguishes The Nix to recommend it.
In the latter pages, especially, Mr. Hill is given to stabs at aphorisms and the kind of the suppositions that pass for wisdom only in tone, not substance. Like, "Time heals many things because it sets us on trajectories that make the past impossible." It does? I've read that sentence a dozen times and I still can't make sense of it.
Or, after a description of airport terminal commerce, a one-sentence paragraph: "This is who we are." Is it? It does tell me somewhat who YOU are- reductive, and mired in sophomoric analysis. This kind of 'insight' merely flatters the reader; no one who reads a book like The Nix finds their soul nourished by the shopping opportunities between Gates 30 and 40. Again, obvious.
Worst: "who if he could have heard what was going through Bishop's head at that moment... would never have exploded that bomb." Wouldn't it be nice to think so, the untapped empathy even of the guerrilla terrorist, who needs only see into the soul of the other to stop him from killing? Here Mr. Hill reveals a fundamentally shallow view of the world, which in this instance (and others) borders on outright naïveté.
And then by the end we're again tying up all the loose ends, converging the characters, and arranging for the climax to take place at an historically significant event; we're in the head of Hubert Humphrey and Allen Ginsberg and Walter Cronkite and whatever on earth for? Because intertwining one's narrative with an Important Historic Event lends heft and significance� and is a hallmark of a bad book.
But narratives like these seem to be catnip to publishers, who love to take the credit for discovering The Next Big Thing. Congratulations, Mr. Hill, on being all the richer for it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 14, 2021
Metamorfoses da Vida
Sei duma rapariga, cujo pai se separou da família duma forma meticulosamente planeada: num dia carregava uma mala de livros, noutro enchia uma mala de roupa, etc, etc...
E entregou-se religiosamente a este ritual de abandono, até ao almejado dia F (“F", de " Fuga' � nada de mal-entendidos 😉).
Porém, o que inicialmente surtiu um forte efeito de choque, cedo deu lugar ao alívio...e...anos mais tarde, tudo se rearranjou!...
Só lendo o livro entenderão porque vos conto este episódio da vida real, pois opto deliberadamente por não explorar uma via onde os spoilers seriam inevitáveis!...
Nix é um calhamaço, e é possível encontrar-lhe muita, muita coisa...mas a mim, a parte que mais me tocou tem a ver com as metamorfoses da vida:
Somos todos diferentes e cada um com o seu percurso. Por vezes, entes chegados distanciam-se, apenas porque em dado timing o seu caminho diverge do nosso. Não obstante, num futuro mais ou menos distante, pode suceder que os nossos percursos se cruzem novamente, e que esses entes dolorosamente perdidos, nos sejam devolvidos, retornando ao nosso mini-mundo.
Se o amor sobreviver, tudo se há-de rearranjar...
Os choques, são apenas os consequentes impactos das mudanças!
“As coisas que mais amas são as que um dia mais te hão de magoar�
Não obstante dolorosa, a recuperação é possível e desafiante!...
Nix tem história e tem política.
É dramático, sério e divertido.
É concentrado e disperso...
Nix é imenso e variado...
É variado como a vida...
Adorei, e recomendo ❤️🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟❤️
Sei duma rapariga, cujo pai se separou da família duma forma meticulosamente planeada: num dia carregava uma mala de livros, noutro enchia uma mala de roupa, etc, etc...
E entregou-se religiosamente a este ritual de abandono, até ao almejado dia F (“F", de " Fuga' � nada de mal-entendidos 😉).
Porém, o que inicialmente surtiu um forte efeito de choque, cedo deu lugar ao alívio...e...anos mais tarde, tudo se rearranjou!...
Só lendo o livro entenderão porque vos conto este episódio da vida real, pois opto deliberadamente por não explorar uma via onde os spoilers seriam inevitáveis!...
Nix é um calhamaço, e é possível encontrar-lhe muita, muita coisa...mas a mim, a parte que mais me tocou tem a ver com as metamorfoses da vida:
Somos todos diferentes e cada um com o seu percurso. Por vezes, entes chegados distanciam-se, apenas porque em dado timing o seu caminho diverge do nosso. Não obstante, num futuro mais ou menos distante, pode suceder que os nossos percursos se cruzem novamente, e que esses entes dolorosamente perdidos, nos sejam devolvidos, retornando ao nosso mini-mundo.
Se o amor sobreviver, tudo se há-de rearranjar...
Os choques, são apenas os consequentes impactos das mudanças!
“As coisas que mais amas são as que um dia mais te hão de magoar�
Não obstante dolorosa, a recuperação é possível e desafiante!...
Nix tem história e tem política.
É dramático, sério e divertido.
É concentrado e disperso...
Nix é imenso e variado...
É variado como a vida...
Adorei, e recomendo ❤️🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟❤️
Shelved as 'abandoned'
July 26, 2016Abandoned around page 240. I think this book will receive rave reviews - it already has from many readers with great taste, including Cynthia! - but I just couldn't get into it. It reads like a cross between Franzen and , a book that I found so pleasantly inoffensive and forgettable that I had to Google its title last week. If you enjoy contemporary fiction that attempts to Say Something About America in the most sweeping, arch, I-got-my-MFA-and-live-in-Brooklyn way, then I think this book will work for you. To be fair, it probably would have worked for me if I had been in the right mood. Alas.
May 2, 2017
“Sometimes we’re so wrapped up in our own story that we don’t see how we’re supporting characters in someone else’s.�
The Nix runs with the idea of a failed writer/ English professor whose quest is to solve the puzzle of why his mother left him when he was a young boy. He hasn’t seen her since he was eleven when she suddenly becomes a media sensation after being caught on film throwing stones at a Republican presidential candidate.
In a nutshell, the first two hundred pages were great. A scene where the English professor secretly plays an online game in his office called World of Elfscape in which his nom de guerre is Dodger and he fights orcs and dragons with a group of faceless friends was one of the funniest I’ve ever read. It was also a brilliant way of showing how he’s still the eleven year old kid whose mother left him. I also really loved his childhood friendship with the wild kid, Bishop who’s always urging him to defy his limits and his romantic yearning for Bishop’s sister, Bethany.
Then I often found it was becoming almost as silly as the silliness it satirizes. This is a rough-hewn long-winded novel which relies on its raw energy more than artistry or sophisticated prose (thanks Jennifer!) Its main aim perhaps is to poke fun rather than narrate any kind of credible story. By page 400 I had forgotten what was at stake in this novel. At least two characters were there simply to provide satire on modern phenomenon and were superfluous to the plot � Pwnage whose online persona has utterly dwarfed his real world self (there were some great insights here on the shifting boundaries between virtual and real life selves but it was clumsy to give so many pages to a character who had no other purpose in the novel save provide these insights) and Laura Pottsdam, a feckless self-righteous student who exploits the PC educational system to shift her failings onto the shoulders of her teacher. Add to that a cartoon baddie, some highly implausible plot devices and the fact that it all finishes with something of a sentimental flourish. There’s some brilliant social commentary and fabulously insightful humour but often I felt there was a disconnect between the characters and ideas, as if the chief function of the characters was to express, rather than dramatise, these ideas. Also it could, maybe should have been edited down to about 400 pages. David Foster Wallace lite might be a good way of describing it.
The Nix runs with the idea of a failed writer/ English professor whose quest is to solve the puzzle of why his mother left him when he was a young boy. He hasn’t seen her since he was eleven when she suddenly becomes a media sensation after being caught on film throwing stones at a Republican presidential candidate.
In a nutshell, the first two hundred pages were great. A scene where the English professor secretly plays an online game in his office called World of Elfscape in which his nom de guerre is Dodger and he fights orcs and dragons with a group of faceless friends was one of the funniest I’ve ever read. It was also a brilliant way of showing how he’s still the eleven year old kid whose mother left him. I also really loved his childhood friendship with the wild kid, Bishop who’s always urging him to defy his limits and his romantic yearning for Bishop’s sister, Bethany.
Then I often found it was becoming almost as silly as the silliness it satirizes. This is a rough-hewn long-winded novel which relies on its raw energy more than artistry or sophisticated prose (thanks Jennifer!) Its main aim perhaps is to poke fun rather than narrate any kind of credible story. By page 400 I had forgotten what was at stake in this novel. At least two characters were there simply to provide satire on modern phenomenon and were superfluous to the plot � Pwnage whose online persona has utterly dwarfed his real world self (there were some great insights here on the shifting boundaries between virtual and real life selves but it was clumsy to give so many pages to a character who had no other purpose in the novel save provide these insights) and Laura Pottsdam, a feckless self-righteous student who exploits the PC educational system to shift her failings onto the shoulders of her teacher. Add to that a cartoon baddie, some highly implausible plot devices and the fact that it all finishes with something of a sentimental flourish. There’s some brilliant social commentary and fabulously insightful humour but often I felt there was a disconnect between the characters and ideas, as if the chief function of the characters was to express, rather than dramatise, these ideas. Also it could, maybe should have been edited down to about 400 pages. David Foster Wallace lite might be a good way of describing it.
February 18, 2017
Throughout most of this book, I was determined that it was a 5-star-read. It's a story that contains several very interesting characters, and it shifts between different time periods and situations. It was written in a language that is easy to get through so that you easily read through its 700 pages. Last but not least, I loved how it was so unpredictable and entertaining which I find necessary qualities in a book this size.
However, as I got closer to the ending the story started to unravel and become filled with unexplainable plot holes. It seemed like the novel and its author had lost their energy and pace, and the last hundred pages were too long and too dragging a conclusion.
In many ways, this book reminds me of "City on Fire" by Risk Hallberg, not just because of its size and publicity, but also because it is constructed in a very similar way even though it deals with a very different story. Nevertheless, I find "The Nix" to be a MUCH better novel that is so rich in quality and entertaining that you simply must read it.
However, as I got closer to the ending the story started to unravel and become filled with unexplainable plot holes. It seemed like the novel and its author had lost their energy and pace, and the last hundred pages were too long and too dragging a conclusion.
In many ways, this book reminds me of "City on Fire" by Risk Hallberg, not just because of its size and publicity, but also because it is constructed in a very similar way even though it deals with a very different story. Nevertheless, I find "The Nix" to be a MUCH better novel that is so rich in quality and entertaining that you simply must read it.
October 30, 2016
4.5 stars
I'll be the first to admit that I agree with some of the plaints of this novel's detractors and dissectors: Nathan Hill's often-precocious writing style (trying really hard to emulate Franzen and DF Wallace); blatant audience pandering (trying to please the gamut of readers from YA-friendlies and gaming nerds to (recent) history-philes and magical realists); and a tendency to meander down myriad and inconsequential plot threads and stray from the important ones. Yet, despite its flaws, I really ate up Hill's debut novel, The Nix. I'm not sure if it's the book's fortuitous timing (released months before the insane circus that is the 2016 US Presidential election) or having utterly appealing, utterly flawed characters I thoroughly relate to, but I could not stop reading, and laughing, and shedding a tear (or twenty).
The story pogos everywhere, spanning roughly six decades and two continents, but all plot threads ultimately lead to 2010 and Samuel Andresen-Anderson (an English prof at a low tier college outside Chicago, an aspiring author with only a Choose Your Own Adventure-esque short story to his writing credit, and a Level umpty-thousand elf on Elfscape, a MMORPG he devotes most of his non-working waking hours to); and his mom, Faye Andresen-Anderson (a mousy, Iowa raised former U of Chicago student and Vietnam War protestor, who abandoned her son and husband in the late '80s, presumably under the influence of The Nix, a Norwegian ghosty-wraith). When Samuel inadvertenly catches a newscast of his mom chucking rocks at an ultra-conservative presidential candidate (turning herself overnight into an internet sensation), it prompts Samuel's literary agent to get the rock-throwing terrorist's abandoned son to write a lurid tell-all.
Then the story back-and-forths between son Samuel and mother Faye, filling in the blanks (Samuel's childhood, Faye's high school and college days) to let the reader know why Samuel's the milquetoast-y gaming slug he is, and why Faye's the irresponsible parent/rock chucker she is. Plenty of memorable supporting characters round out the mix of The Nix, like plagiarist student (of Samuel's) Laura, fellow online gamer Pwnage, the twin "B"s; Faye's fellow protestors Alice and Sebastian, her Norwegian father (and napalm producer) Frank. And, of course, that nix (and maybe even, that Nix, too (good old Tricky Dick himself)).
This book is so stuffed to the gills, it's hard to be enamored of the 640-page length (and more than a few times I thought "did he really have to include that?" or "Did he really need to write a thirteen page-long sentence on the ills of role-playing computer games?" (for instance) but I can overlook sins of commission when the overall output is so engaging, funny, sad, and (mostly) relevant. This reminded me a bit of the last super highly-anticipated novel I read, Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire (another problematic doorstopper that I really liked). Despite Nathan Hill's frequent flights of fancy, I liked The Nix quite a bit more than City on Fire (which I gave 4 stars). Nowhere to go but up from there, hence the 4.5 stars, rounded up. Wouldn't be a bit surprised if it won an award or two (ahem, stodgy Pulitzer Panel, I got my eyes on y'all). Flawed, but all kinds of fun.
I'll be the first to admit that I agree with some of the plaints of this novel's detractors and dissectors: Nathan Hill's often-precocious writing style (trying really hard to emulate Franzen and DF Wallace); blatant audience pandering (trying to please the gamut of readers from YA-friendlies and gaming nerds to (recent) history-philes and magical realists); and a tendency to meander down myriad and inconsequential plot threads and stray from the important ones. Yet, despite its flaws, I really ate up Hill's debut novel, The Nix. I'm not sure if it's the book's fortuitous timing (released months before the insane circus that is the 2016 US Presidential election) or having utterly appealing, utterly flawed characters I thoroughly relate to, but I could not stop reading, and laughing, and shedding a tear (or twenty).
The story pogos everywhere, spanning roughly six decades and two continents, but all plot threads ultimately lead to 2010 and Samuel Andresen-Anderson (an English prof at a low tier college outside Chicago, an aspiring author with only a Choose Your Own Adventure-esque short story to his writing credit, and a Level umpty-thousand elf on Elfscape, a MMORPG he devotes most of his non-working waking hours to); and his mom, Faye Andresen-Anderson (a mousy, Iowa raised former U of Chicago student and Vietnam War protestor, who abandoned her son and husband in the late '80s, presumably under the influence of The Nix, a Norwegian ghosty-wraith). When Samuel inadvertenly catches a newscast of his mom chucking rocks at an ultra-conservative presidential candidate (turning herself overnight into an internet sensation), it prompts Samuel's literary agent to get the rock-throwing terrorist's abandoned son to write a lurid tell-all.
Then the story back-and-forths between son Samuel and mother Faye, filling in the blanks (Samuel's childhood, Faye's high school and college days) to let the reader know why Samuel's the milquetoast-y gaming slug he is, and why Faye's the irresponsible parent/rock chucker she is. Plenty of memorable supporting characters round out the mix of The Nix, like plagiarist student (of Samuel's) Laura, fellow online gamer Pwnage, the twin "B"s; Faye's fellow protestors Alice and Sebastian, her Norwegian father (and napalm producer) Frank. And, of course, that nix (and maybe even, that Nix, too (good old Tricky Dick himself)).
This book is so stuffed to the gills, it's hard to be enamored of the 640-page length (and more than a few times I thought "did he really have to include that?" or "Did he really need to write a thirteen page-long sentence on the ills of role-playing computer games?" (for instance) but I can overlook sins of commission when the overall output is so engaging, funny, sad, and (mostly) relevant. This reminded me a bit of the last super highly-anticipated novel I read, Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire (another problematic doorstopper that I really liked). Despite Nathan Hill's frequent flights of fancy, I liked The Nix quite a bit more than City on Fire (which I gave 4 stars). Nowhere to go but up from there, hence the 4.5 stars, rounded up. Wouldn't be a bit surprised if it won an award or two (ahem, stodgy Pulitzer Panel, I got my eyes on y'all). Flawed, but all kinds of fun.
May 24, 2018
a fusillade of Far Out, man! A superb novel. Finally, a book that lives up to the pre-pub hype. Review to follow.
I loved this book!
I loved this book!
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